Richard Wright Essays (Examples)

(It will be recalled that right's then unpublished Lawd Today served as a working model for The Outsider.) Cross, in his daily dealings with the three women and his fellow postal workers feel something akin to nausea. His social and legal obligations have enslaved him. He has inherited from his mother a sense of guilt and foreboding regarding his relationship to women and his general awareness of amoral physical and sexual longings. Yet he is aloof and intellectual enough to know that the dread he experiences is psychological (i.e., it stems from his religious upbringing, the demands of his women, and the knowledge that he lives in a world devoid of reason, God, or universal values). right stresses here that Cross's views have been arrived at as a result of his reading and his individual relationships; and only secondarily because he is a Negro. Allusion is made early in this…

Richard right's social themes (e.g., racism) in any one of his short stories. Specifically it will discuss "Black Boy," and "Native Son."

RICHARD RIGHT

Richard right was born in Mississippi in 1908 and died in 1960. During his rather brief lifetime, he completed several novels, and books of poems, all dealing with black issues and ideas. Two of his most famous works are "Black Boy," and "Native Son," which this paper will discuss.

hile right may not have faced many of the problems his slave grandparents did, he still had many hurdles before America accepted him as a writer. "right nevertheless was faced with daunting barriers to literary achievement: racism, poverty, family problems, religion, and a modest formal education" (Felgar 1).

right lived for a time in Chicago, where he set "Native Son," and when he died in 1960, he was living in Paris. He worked for a time as…

ichard Wright's novel 'Black Boy', which was published in 1945. Black boy focuses on the life of the author in South where he witnessed devastating racial segregation and discrimination and realized that virtual slavery was still prevalent even after the Civil war. The paper also examines author's position in the novel and finds out to what extent he had been successful in creating awareness regarding the issue of racism.

BLACK BOY SYNOPSIS AND HISTOICAL BACKGOUND

Black boy is one of the most successful and powerful novels to emerge out of Black literature of 1940s. The novel is actually an autobiographical account of the author's life and his struggle with racism that existed in American society of his days. The author has explicitly described the pain and anguish of growing up black in the South of early 1900s. Since the Civil war and its impact was still fresh in the minds…

The Oxsoralen he took to change the color of his skin may have hastened his death. hy did he do it? "If I could take on the skin of a black man, live whatever might happen and then share that experience with others, perhaps at the level of shared human experience, we might come to some understanding that was not possible at the level of pure reason" (Power 2006).

Through all of his experiences as a "black" man, Griffin felt the deprivation of basic needs, to go to the rest room, to get a drink of water, to earn a decent living, to find a place to sleep, and that denial by white citizens made him realize that in this land of freedom many citizens were not free, in fact and in their mind. His temporary immersion in the black world of the day made him realize his own "otherness,"…

ichard Wright: The Best Writer

ichard Wright is my selection for best writer among host of other black writers during and fate the Harlem enaissance. The reason I regard ichard Wright as the best among such black intellectuals as Zora Neale Hurston, alph Ellison, and Lionel Trilling is the fact that he was more politically aware of the situation of black people than most of his contemporaries. With his writings, he tried to establish a black identity that was most original in nature. It was not based on borrowed concepts or views and originated from a young educated and trained mind. In a short period of time and a relatively brief lifetime (1908-1960), he graduated from being the grandson of slave grandparents in rural Mississippi to an international renowned writer in 1940s and 1950s. He preached personal freedom for everyone including the black community. Wright was of the view that…

lack American Prejudice and Injustice in "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" by Richard Wright

During the 1940s-1960s, American literature began developing a new kind of movement where black American culture and experience have become widespread through the narrative accounts of contemporary black American writers. Called the Harlem Renaissance, this new American literature movement created a following among black Americans because of the truth and reality that these literatures reflect about black American life. One popular writer during this period is Richard Wright, who has been renowned from his works "The lack oy" and "The Native Son" (Microsoft Encarta 2002). Apart from his novels, Wright also created short stories (of which the most popular is "Uncle Tom's Children") where the main theme always include black American prejudice and injustices against them committed by the white American society.

Wright's sensitive portrayal of the life of a Negro during his adulthood years…

right indicates that surmounting oppression is an aspect of growing up. From this point-of-view, many people never truly grow up; right was fortunate in discovering his particular version of escape just in time.

Race remains a very complex issue. The differences between human beings are equally numerous as our similarities: in every way that we are the same we are also different. e may each have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth; but each pair of eyes and ears, each nose and each mouth is individually unique. How we consciously recognize these differences and similarities is primarily linked to our social setting -- though it may secondarily be linked to our genetic makeup. In other words, human beings over the course of their lives become accustomed to the company, appearance, and behavior of those around them; this is such an intuitive fact that it hardly bears mentioning.…

As a poet, right becomes like a surrogate for the man, or a medium who channels the man's spirit: "And then they [the lynchers] had me, stripped me, battering my teeth / into my throat till I swallowed my own blood."

This is a poetic awakening for right, even though it is painful. By entering the "Inferno" of the woods, right finds his calling. He finds it through the guidance of apprehending the dead man, the dead man who becomes his guide through the underworld that is life for a black man in America during the era when right lived and for many years afterwards. right calls it a 'baptism' by gasoline, and by the end of the poem, right has fully 'become' the dead man: "Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in / yellow surprise at the sun...."

According to Orlando Patterson's book…

Instead Hurston relies on the strength of her personality and her insistent enjoyment of life to carry her through oppressive times. This attitude is significantly different from that of Wright. It appears that whereas Wright at first displays an almost unhealthy admiration for white people at the cost of his own self-esteem, Hurston's greatest confidence is in herself and her personality. This, like Wright's attitude, can be attributed to a great degree to her location and upbringing.

Whereas Wright's first encounters with white people drive him away from them, strengthening the divides between them, Hurston's curiosity drives her towards them. he also recognizes that there is a difference between southern and northern whites, which accounts for her relatively positive experience with some members of the other culture. Thus the basis for her future experiences, attitudes and actions rests on the fact that Hurston had a more balanced view of what…

Public Passions

In "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," Richard right provided a brief autobiographical sketch of his life growing up in the segregated South. He described how he learned about the laws of Jim Crow in the South, and the unwritten code of ethics or manners that all blacks should follow in the presence of whites. Fox example, some informal rules held that blacks must always address a white man as sir, or that they always had to give up their seats to whites, while legal segregation required them to sit in separate sections of restaurants, theaters, busses and trains. Black men could not look at a white woman naked let alone have sex with her, and even the suspicion that they had might result in a lynching. Post-colonial theory is a vital part of "Living Jim Crow," in that it depicts a racial community segregated, brutalized and marginalized…

The fact that he is black in no way detracts from Faulkner's message about racism and social control. For example, Faulkner hints that Nancy may have been raped by a white man; her skin color renders her subhuman in the eyes of many white southerners. To Jubah, his masculinity is called into question on two accounts: he must assert himself not only as a man, but as a black man whose wife had been violated by whites. Jubah's violent and aggressive persona corresponds with Dave's. Dave, like Jubah, are powerhouses of male potency, pushed to the boiling point out of a sense of powerlessness and anger. right directly alludes to the potential of male aggression because the mule Dave shoots is named Jenny. hen Jenny bleeds from the gunshot wound, right describes the "hole" and the "blood" using overtly female symbols. Dave never alludes to having sex with women, however.…

At the end of the story, we see the big windows, "bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement" (1421) as Sammy walks away from the only world outside his home the he knew. These images successfully allow us to see the boys as boys rather than men.

Language becomes a significant aspect of both stories in that it allows us to see the boys and the worlds in which they live. Dialect in "The Man ho as Almost a Man" gives us a clear image of Dave's world and, by doing so, provides additional reasons for him to become a man. He wants to be respected in a town where African-Americans work for white people and a sense of equality is absent. hen Dave comments that he wants respect, what he wants is to be considered a man regardless of color. In "A and P,"…

Both short stories also contain an estrangement of place -- neither young man can seem to find a home in either the North or South. At the beginning Faulkner's tale, Samuel is utterly lost to the South. He does not sound like a Southerner to the census taker at the beginning of the tale, and his clothing suggests a Northern dandy. (Faulkner 351) Later, Samuel's grandmother Mollie's insists that her grandson has been sold into Egypt, like a Israelite slave from the Old Testament, as if the North were more of a place of bondage than the divided South. At "The Man ho as Almost a Man" the end of the sorry tale may seem to give the reader some higher hope, as it ends on a theme of flight from the South. The protagonist makes a decision to flee the area he has been bound to, as a result…

God I Don't Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith

Preface and Introduction

The Preface explains why Wright chose to write this book. He felt that it could be a more personal and humble approach to God than that achieved in his other books, which were about "knowing God." In this book, Wright wants to address some of the more confusing aspects of God. He justifies this approach by showing how God Himself points out that His ways are not our ways in Scripture. This is a valid point, and what Wright is doing is drawing attention to the fact that we are not God's equals and therefore should not try to humanize Him but rather should try to understand that He knows and sees all and therefore has a good reason for why He commands and does things that might seem disturbing or odd to us.

However, in Wright's…

Mookie's frustrated acts show that violence is sometimes justified as a means of "self-defense," in Malcolm X's words. Bigger did not have access to the words of wisdom of either Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. More importantly, Bigger did not have access to a community of like-minded African-Americans who could sympathize with if not totally condone the use of violence to preserve cultural integrity and pride.

Mookie and Bigger are remarkably similar, proving that little has actually changed for African-Americans in terms of gaining social and political power even after the Civil Rights movement. Richard Wright's novel Native Son illustrates the extent of racial discrimination during the early half of the twentieth century; Spike Lee's movie "Do the Right Thing" reveals the extent of racial discrimination during the latter half of the century. The protagonists in Native Son and "Do the Right Thing" live in different times and…

Black Experience in American Culture

This is a paper that analyzes the black experience in American culture as presented by Hughes, Baldwin, Wright and Ellison. It has 20 sources in MLA format.

African-American authors have influenced American culture as they have come forward to present issues that the society would rather have forgotten. Authors such as ichard Wright alph Ellison, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin have come under fire as they have written about the racial and biased experiences throughout their life [Capetti, 2001] and through their narratives they have forged a link between the past, the present (themselves) and their future (the unborn generation).

These literary works are an effort on their part to prove to their nations that regardless of the perceived realities their existence and lives have valuable. The slave past some of these authors have had created a void in their lives that at times left…

Man Who Almost Was a Man," by Richard Wright, explains how the non-literary dimension changes one's understanding of the story.

The Man Who Was Almost a Man"

Richard Wright was one of the greatest African-American writers; he was also the first African-American to have produced one of the famous novel of racism and its psychological affect on the individuals in his masterpiece "Native on." Born in 1908 in Mississippi, Wright father left the family when he was only six years old and when he was ten his mother had a paralytic stroke and was unable to work. Wright after a formal education was forced to seek employment in order to support his family. The first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period for the African-Americans, the discrimination against them had taken a different form and shape and there were little jobs available for the black people. Wright worked…

Racial Exclusion in America

When one thinks of racial exclusion, they usually think of the reconstruction period of the late 1800s and the Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow laws prohibited blacks from drinking from the same water fountains, eating in the same restaurants, and ride in the back of the bus. Most ideas of racial exclusion are targeted at blacks, however, many other ethnic groups were the victims of racial exclusion as well. They may not have had laws condoning it, as was the case with blacks and Native Americans, but exclusion was there never the less. The books "Black Boy" by Richard Wright and "America is in the Heart" by Carlos Bulosan are two of the best examples illustrating the effects of racial exclusion from an insider's perspective. This paper will compare these two books both from historical perspective and from a contemporary standpoint.

Everyone knows about the…

On the threshold of the Civil Rights movement, Baldwin would publish
Notes of a Native Son. Though 1953's Go Tell It On The Mountain would be
perhaps Baldwin's best known work, it is this explicitly referential
dialogic follow-up to right's
Native Son that would invoke some of the most compelling insights which
Baldwin would have to offer on the subject of American racism. This is,
indeed, a most effectively lucid examination from the perspective of a
deeply self-conscious writer enduring the twin marks in a nation of
virulent prejudice of being both African American and homosexual. The
result of this vantage is a set of essays that reaches accord with right's
conception of the socially devastating impact of segregation on the psyche,
conscience and real opportunity but also one that takes issue with the
brutality of Bigger, a decidedly negative image to be invoked of the black
man in America.…

(Norvell)

This is revealed at the end of the story when Olaf realizes that Jim never intended to kill him but simply do something nice for him. It is interesting to note that while Jim drinks and spends time with prostitutes, he is the one that offers a nice gesture toward Jim. Olaf would appear to be the nicer of the two men, given that he does not drink and carry on like Jim does. Olaf seems nice and keeps most of his thoughts to himself; this is precisely why we should not trust him. Jim might be perceived as the more aggressive and frightening of the two because he towers over six feet tall. right uses these images to illustrate how looks can, and usually are, deceiving. right keeps us guessing about Jim until the end of the story; he leads us on with Olaf's thoughts and fears.

The…

Man Who Killed a Shadow comments on a short story written by Richard Wright

The short story, "A Man Who Killed a Shadow," was first printed in the Spring, 1949 issue of Zero Magazine and is essentially based on an actual event which occurred a few years earlier. Of course, Wright fictionalized the names and some of the events to make his dramatic points.

I believe that "The Man Who Killed a Shadow" is a commentary on racism based upon the racial "universalities" which were very much present in 1949 in the South, including Washington, D.C. And Virginia.

The main character, Saul Saunders, finds out during the story that these "universalities" are impossible to escape. First, Saul realizes almost immediately that his being alone with a white woman, especially one who is screaming incessantly, is a situation a Black man should never find himself in. Wright's use of the unseen…

(Cha-Jua, 2001, at (http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue31/chajua31.htm)

Another aspect of representation, however, concerns collective memory and the representation of a shared past. Through the context for dialogue they create, social movements facilitate the interweaving of individual stories and biographies into a collective, unified frame, a collective narrative. Part and parcel of the process of collective identity or will formation is the linking of diverse experiences into a unity, past as well as present. Social movements are central to this process, not only at the individual level, but also at the organizational or meso level of social interaction. Institutions like the black church and cultural artifacts like blues music may have embodied and passed on collective memories from generation to generation, but it was through social movements that even these diverse collective memories attained a more unified focus, linking individuals and collectives into a unified subject, with a common future as well as a…

American Lit

Definition of Modernism and Three Examples

Indeed, creating a true and solid definition of modernism is exceptionally difficult, and even most of the more scholarly critical accounts of the so-called modernist movement tend to divide the category into more or less two different movements, being what is known as "high modernism," which reflected the erudition and scholarly experimentalism of Eliot, Joyce, and Pound, and the so-called "low modernism" of later American practitioners, such as William Carlos Williams. Nonetheless, despite the problems of reification involved with such a task, I will attempt to invoke a definitions of at least some traits of modernism, as culled from the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:

First, [in modernism] "realization" had to replace description, so that instead of copying the external world the work could render it in an image insisting on its own forms of reality... [and] Second, the poets develop…

women are confined in society as depicted in the stories by Steinback, Joyce and Oates.

Stories set in the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century often depict women as being confined to the norms of society even while they struggle to be free. Authors of literary works may they be short or long stories have often presented these women as being frustrated with the status imposed upon them and show the problems they face in a patriarchal society. In John Steinback's Chrysanthemums for instance, the female character Elisa Allen has been portrayed as "a strong, capable woman kept from personal, social, and sexual fulfillment by the prevailing conception of a woman's role in a world dominated by men" (Steinback, 306). Her appearance, manner and speech all suggest that she is a woman frustrated with the male dominated world. Her husband forever reminds Elisa that she…

In "The Secret Life of alter Mitty," Mitty escapes the reality of his manhood with daydreaming. He does this because his wife emasculates him. For Mitty, daydreams are better than dealing with a bothersome wife. Mitty is a real man in his mind as he fantasizes about saving the Navy hydroplane. Mitty is not happy and he argues with his wife over such things as overshoes. He is no doubt a curmudgeon, as we see when he calls the parking lot attendant "damn cocky" (Thurber 1361). Mitty is unlucky in life but we have to wonder how much of this is his fault. Many would look at him and see nothing that resembles a real man. His imagination is his escape, which makes Mitty happy, as he declares himself "undefeated" and "inscrutable" (1364). Mitty might know how to escape his awful world but he is taking a chicken's way out.…

Seeing orld Another Perspective." "Half a Day" Naguib Mahfouz "Big Black Good Man" Richard right "A Very Old Man Enormous ings" Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Particularities have always served as a tool for discrimination, given that the contemporary society has grown accustomed to treat people on account of their background and depending on the way that they look. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1955 short story "A Very Old Man ith Enormous ings" puts across an episode in the life of a Hispanic community that has come to express its discriminatory and exploitative nature consequent to encountering a distressed creature. The Native American saying "Never criticize another until you have walked a mile in his moccasins" partly explains Garcia Marquez's account. Fueled by folklore and as a result of seeing the opportunity to make easy money, the Pelayo and Elisenda do not hesitate to take advantage of the angel's state of decay, regardless…

Keepin' it real -- Real-ism, that is: Today's 'take' on John Singleton's 1991 film, "Boyz in the Hood"

The pummeling hip-hop soundtrack immediately sets the tone for "Boyz in the Hood." This film's musical sound signals to the viewer that it is produced by someone who knows the street, because it sounds like the street, screams like the street -- a particular kind of neighborhood street -- that of the 'hood.' The film's early use of quick cuts in a montage that introduces the main protagonists and the neighborhood to the viewer and its sharp, guttural dialogue suggest that the director is 'really' going to show to the viewer how people 'really' and authentically communicate in real, urban street life.

The use of short sentences and monosyllables in many films that attempt to seem realistic is often also used to show individuals who know each other well, like brothers and…

One of Wright's major works was Black Boy and one of the most poignant sections of that book was Chapter 12 in which Wright described the experiences of two southern black boys exploited by the "five dollar fight." Working for an optician in Memphis, Tennessee, the protagonist (Richard) hopes that his experiences with white people in Memphis will be better than in the small town of Jackson, Mississippi "The people of Memphis had an air of relative urbanity that took some of the sharpness off the attitude of whites toward Negroes & #8230;"

However, Richard finds that white people are just as exploitative and abusive of blacks in the big city as in small towns. Some of the white men where Richard works pay another black boy a quarter at a time to let them kick him in his rear end and even when white men seem to be nice…

Blurring the Gap Between Fiction and eal Life

This is a paper that outlines how modern literature integrates personal experiences of the writers into works of fiction. It has 5 sources.

It is quite interesting to note the means by which eminent writers attract attention to their ideas and literary content. On closer examination, we may come to the conclusion that the means by which public attention may be grabbed has followed a definite pattern through the years. While writers like Shakespeare and his contemporaries used fiction to project their literary geniuses, modern day writers strive to catch the attention of the masses by presenting their own personal conflicts and tragedies to the public. The modern writer has lessened the gap between a literary piece of work and real life. However, literature in the classical period is known for its often unnatural and over-dramatized perspectives on life. Today, the stories…

Harlem enaissance was a true flourishing of African-American arts, music, and literature, thereby contributing tremendously to the cultural landscape of the nation. Much Harlem enaissance literature reflects the experience of the "great migration" of blacks from the rural south to the urban north. Those experiences included reflections on the intersections between race, class, gender, and power. Many of the Harlem enaissance writers penned memoirs that offer insight into the direct experience of racism, such as ichard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." Poets worked with classic literary devices like symbolism and imagery to convey the intense emotions linked to experiences of prejudice and violence. Emerging in conjunction with social and political justice movements such as women's rights and labor rights, the movement to empower black communities through the arts also spilled beyond the borders of the African-American community. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels and short stories addressed class…

Some artists, such as Aaron Douglas, captured the feeling of Africa in their work because they wanted to show their ancestry through art. Others, like Archibald J. Motley Jr., obtained their inspiration from the surroundings in which they lived in; where jazz was at the forefront and African-Americans were just trying to get by day-to-day like any other Anglo-American. Additionally, some Black American artists felt more comfortable in Europe than they did in America. These artists tended to paint landscapes of different European countries. Most of the latter, however, were ostracized for this because many black politicians felt they should represent more of their African culture in their work (Campbell 1994, Powell and Bailey).

Whatever the case, most African-American artists during this period of time had a similarity that tied them together. Black art was often very colorful and vivacious; having an almost rhythmic feel to it. This was appropriate…

Tracing these developments in the novel, the succeeding discussion illustrates the character transition of the protagonist through his relationships and interaction with other characters in the novel.

As a discriminated individual, Bigger had learned not to expect more from his community and society, limiting his dreams in life by earning just enough money to allow him and his family to eat for a day, as well as provide for some basic needs. right provides a glimpse of Bigger's psyche, which explained why his behavior and attitude towards life was full of bitterness and limitations (13):

He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he…

Fiction:

Fou Stoies and thei Elements

A peson eads fiction fo many easons. Often times, as Richad Wight suggests, one chooses to escape one's life, and discove new ealities and states of being. Fiction is pehaps the most poweful medium that can tanspot a peson outside of eveything peviously known, as fiction challenges not only one's intelligence, but also one's imagination. Due to this eason, fiction is hee to say, so to speak, unchallenged in its complexity by such things as television o othe eceational activities, as compute o video games. The following pages will engage fou stoies in ode to descibe just how inticate a witten wok of fiction can be, and will examine vaious pats of these stoies in ode to link them to ways of thinking and daily existence.

An Act of Vengeance by Isabel Allende

This shot stoy by Isabel Allende is tuly a melange of…

Smith & Walke

Both Smith and Walke who wite about the plight of black people and the feelings of inevitability and acism can invoke in Black people and in thei lives. A significant diffeence between the poem and the shot stoy is the geneation and age of the individuals. Wheeas Walke's shot stoy is concened with the acism and pain expeienced by an eldely Afican-Ameican woman in the post-civil ights ea, Smith is concened with a young woman in the same ea. The eldely woman is in ual county and the young woman, as evidenced by Smith's efeence to 'Motown' is in an uban setting. The disconnect both women feel fom both thei bodies and fom thei suoundings is the unifying thead that binds these two seemingly dispaate stoies. I am inteested in exploing the theme of alienation fom one's suoundings and fom one's body that lie at the heat…

The reduction occurs through allowing the counties to acquire other methods of jailing apart from the prisons. This includes out-of custody rehabilitative treatments, which could serve in reducing the number of the criminals taken to the prisons. However, the AB109 criminals must be individuals whose crime are not violent and not that serious as provided by the law. This means that that jailing of the A109 criminals in other alternative would involve selection from the other criminals. However the unstated implication is that it would be much difficult to rate a crime as either more serious or not serious. Consequently, the rationale provides higher chances of biasness of selecting some non-serious cases while leaving others.

Implication of the policy

The criminal justice implication of the policy will mainly affect the non-violent arrestees. The decision of keeping them in custody, would affect their ability to avoid recividism future. The social implications…

Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers is a tale involving five main characters that struggle against the isolation and despair brought on by circumstances in their lives. The story takes place during the late 1930's in an unnamed deep Southern town. McCullers begins the story by introducing the deaf-mute John Singer; he used to live with his friend Spiros Antonapoulos who was also a deaf-mute. Singer doted on his friend a great deal even though it was apparent that Antonapoulos never showed any appreciation towards it. Later Antonapoulos became mentally ill and was taken away to an insane asylum despite Singer's protestations. Due to this, Singer had to move out of the home he once shared with his friend and become a boarder at the house of the Kelly's.

Biff Brannon and Jake Blount are next introduced in the story. Biff runs a popular local restaurant named the…

Race continues to play a role in American culture and policy in the 21st century. Average incomes in the United tates are demonstrably dissimilar, affirmative action policies allow campuses to use race as a determining factor when creating student bodies, and race continues to define media and culture to a significant degree. To some extent, these factors should escape our criticism, as it can't be considered desirable for all people from all races and cultural backgrounds to converge into a national monoculture. However, to the extent that people are excluded from opportunities as a result of race rather than merit, we have no choice but to find fault and look for solutions. As Richard Payne writes in Getting Beyond Race, "General racial classifications ignore the obvious biological reality that each individual within the human species, with the exception of identical twins, is genetically unique." (Payne, pg. 1)

The essentialist articulation…

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. Specifically, it will contain a brief biography of the author; address the topic of alienation as it pertains to the work, and include some critical reviews of the novel. Many critics consider novelist Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man" a classic in American literature, and a treatise on how blacks have been treated by white society throughout the decades. His story is a tale of alienation, prejudice, and the strength one man has to rise above these obstacles to become the best man he can be.

The Invisible Man - The Author, Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 1, 1914. His parents, Lewis and Ida Ellison, were from the South, but had moved to Oklahoma searching for racial equality they could not find at home (Watts 33). His father died when Ellison was three, and his mother raised her two…

Duke Ellington: "Symphony in Black"

Symphony in Black, A Rhapsody of Black Life" is Duke Ellington's second motion picture. The film was directed by Fred aller at Paramount Pictures and then was released during the mid-1930s. One of the most thought-provoking features of this short film is the lack of stereotypical, racist representations of African-Americans which deface earliest jazz movies. This motion picture showed Ellington as composer that was on the same level as other famous composer of "Rhapsody in Blue." In the film, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra are depicted as skilled, and a dignified performer. ith that said, this essay will discuss how Richard right's characters in Down by the Riverside, or Long Black Song reflect both the version of history that Ellington describes, and the idea of history that Conn sees as so essential to 1930s American culture.

Richard right's characters in Down by the Riverside, reflect…

Abstract

This paper examines the death penalty as a deterrent and argues that states have not only the right but the duty to apply the death penalty to criminal cases because it is incumbent upon states to back the law with force. The death penalty acts as a forceful and compelling consequence for those who should choose to violate the law and commit murder. For that reason it can be said to be a deterrent. This paper also examines the opposing arguments and shows that those would say it is not an effective deterrent cannot offer any quantitative proof for this argument because no measurements exist that could possibly render such a claim factual or provable. The paper concludes by showing that the death penalty should only be administered in states where there is harmony between social justice and criminal justice.

Introduction

While it may seem ironic that the death…

Multi-Ethnic Literature

The focus of this work is to examine multi-ethnic literature and focus on treating humans like farm animals that can be manipulated for various purposes. Multi-Ethnic literature offers a glimpse into the lives of the various writers of this literature and into the lives of various ethnic groups and the way that they view life and society and their experiences. Examined in this study are various writers including Tupac Shakar, Dorothy West, Petry, and others.

A Rose Grows From Concrete

One might be surprised to learn that Tupac Shakar was the writer of many sensitive poems. Upon his death in 1996, Tupac's mother released a collection of poems entitled 'A Rose Grows From Concrete', which includes various love poems among the 72 poems in the collection. Tupac writes:

Things that make hearts break.

Pretty smiles

Deceiving laughs

And people who dream with their eyes open

Lonely children

Unanswered…

Capital Punishment: A Capital Offense in Today's Easily Misguided orld

The debate surrounding the usage of capital punishment in the modern era has raged for generations. hile there have always been arguments for the positive aspects of capital punishment, today's world is less optimistic about the death penalty -- and with good reason. The death penalty affects more than just the convicted, it affects all of society. In order to show why capital punishment should be avoided, it is helpful to draw lessons from history, literature, and psychology.

The historical case for capital punishment has long been made. Capital punishment has existed in every major society in one form or another throughout the centuries. As Michael Kronenwetter states, in every society "all punishment is based on the same simple proposition: There must be a penalty for wrongdoing" (1). Kronenwetter is correct in asserting as much: all major societies have had…

Most large cities have a symphony orchestra, which may perform a dozen times during a season. Jazz and the blues, however, are usually available most of the time in small venues like bars and clubs, and often during the year at large festivals, such as the Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, California. Jazz is gaining in popularity on the radio too, and most larger cities have at least one jazz station, while they might not have a classical station. Classical music is accessible in a number of areas, but jazz and the blues are accessible in many more, and that is why today's listener has a wide choice of options when looking for live jazz and blues concerts.

Any trained musician knows all musical genres have similarities. They all use a distinct language of notes and rhythms, and they all use meter, tempo, and harmony. In this, jazz and blues…

Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003)

Introduction / Background History

Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime took its toll and he served seven years of nightmarish incarceration at hard labor. But, with the knowledge that he had not been born a criminal, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, and he vowed to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard-core youth and turn them away from a life of crime.

Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating,…

They were followed in 1936 by the Harlem River Houses, a more modest experiment in housing projects. And by 1964, nine giant public housing projects had been constructed in the neighborhood, housing over 41,000 people [see also Tritter; Pinckney and oock].

The roots of Harlem's various pre 1960's-era movements for African-American equality began growing years before the Harlem Renaissance itself, and were still alive long after the Harlem Renaissance ended. For example:

The NAACP became active in Harlem in 1910 and Marcus Garvey's Universal

Negro Improvement Organization in 1916. The NAACP chapter there soon grew to be the largest in the country. Activist a. Philip Randolph lived in Harlem and published the radical magazine the Messenger starting in 1917.

It was from Harlem that he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car

Porters. .E.B. DuBois lived and published in Harlem in the 1920s, as did

James eldon Johnson and Marcus Garvey.…

ith the link to the Bible, the story "…resonates with the richness of distant antecedents" and it no longer is "locked in the middle of the twentieth century"; hence, it never grows old, Foster concludes (56).

C.S. Lewis on the Importance of Reading Good Literature

C.S. Lewis, noted novelist, literary critic, lay theologian and essayist, advocates reading literature in his book an Experiment in Criticism. He is disappointed in fact when individuals only read important novels once. Reading a novel the second time for many on his list of incomplete readers is "…like a burnt-out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday's paper" (Lewis, 2012, p. 2). Those bright alert people who read great works will read the same book "…ten, twenty or thirty times" during their lifetime and discover more with each reading, Lewis writes. The person who is a "devotee of culture" is worth "much more than the…

Carlos also proved that the music of ach was dimensionally ever-changing and could be expressed quite well through the use of electronics.

Pink Floyd, one of the most influential "psychedelic" groups from England, utterly transformed the entire spectrum of music in the late 1960's and early 1970's through the use of the synthesizer and other electronic devices. On their "Dark Side of the Moon" album, Pink Floyd, especially bassist/keyboardist Roger Waters and keyboardist Richard Wright, completely altered all previous ideas concerning how the synthesizer could take the listener on a new voyage of discovery into uncharted territories of sound. For Pink Floyd, the synthesizer was far more than just a tool -- it was a machine with the capabilities of transforming the landscape of sound into something cosmic in origin.

In conclusion, electronic music, from its humble beginnings in the 1940's and into the present day, has greatly influenced most…

Civil ar

From Slavery to African-American

By the beginning of the Civil ar, there were some four million African-Americans living in the United States, 3.5 million slaves lived in the South, while another 500,000 lived free across the country (African pp). The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 granted freedom to all slaves in the Confederacy, and the 13th Amendment of 1865 freed the remaining slaves throughout the nation (African pp). During the Reconstruction Era, African-Americans in the South gained a number of civil rights, including the right to vote and to hold office, however, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, white landowners initiated racial segregation that resulted in vigilante violence, including lynchings (African pp).

This resulted in the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North during the beginning of the twentieth century (African pp).

From this Great Migration came an intellectual and cultural elite group of African-Americans that grew…

Gertude Stein.

Gertrude Stein

It is difficult to think of 1920's Paris without recalling Gertrude Stein. A friend to some of the most prominent artists and writers of the 20th century, Stein is not only known for her own accomplished writing contributions, but also for her personal lifestyle.

Gertrude Stein was born in 1874 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She attended Radcliffe from 1893-1897, where she was a student of illiam James. One day Stein wrote, "Dear Professor James, I am sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today"...the next day James send her a postcard saying "I understand perfectly how you feel, I often feel like that myself," and then he gave her the highest mark in his course (orld pg). She then began premedical work at Johns Hopkins. In 1902, she decided to take a break from her studies, and went abroad,…

United States is a country that thrives on the achievements of various people groups. The achievements of African-Americans in the United States are particularly significant. African-Americans have contributed greatly to the world of literature, medicine, and business. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the role that African-Americans have played in the formulation of American culture.

lacks in America

Although the history of blacks in America has been steeped in bigotry, hatred, and segregation, the culture has managed to face these adversities with courage and triumph. African-American's have fought for equal rights since their arrival in this country. Initially, they were forced to fight for the right to be free men and to end slavery. Eventually, African-Americans also struggled for integration during the civil rights movement. There were several individuals that were instrumental in ensuring that African-Americans were free from slavery and that they gained their civil rights. These…

Richard T. Wright, Dorothy Boorse, Population and Resources

Before sewer systems and water treatment plants, there were many people who were still able to live hygienically. Even today, there are a number of people whose homes are not attached to city sewer systems, and whose waste products do not make their way to a water treatment plant. These people generally have septic tanks buried in their yards, and a drain field extends from the tank, also buried in the yard. This allows the waste products to be safely and hygienically removed from the home, and these products eventually go back to the earth. This takes time, and there can be problems with the system. Tanks can crack, become too full, or the drain system can fail to drain properly. If the slope in the pipes from the sinks and other facilities to the septic system are not correct, there could…

conservative intellectual movement, but also the role of William uckley and William Rusher in the blossoming of the youth conservative movement

Talk about structure of paper, who not strictly chronologically placed (ie hayek before the rest) - in this order for thematic purposes, to enhance the genuiness of the paper (branches of the movement brought up in order of importance to youth conservative revolt) For instance, Hayek had perhaps the greatest impact on the effects of the movement - uckley and Rusher. These individuals, their beliefs, their principles were extremely influential in better understanding the origins, history, and leaders of American conservatism.

Momentous events shape the psyche of an individual as the person matures. A child grows up in poverty vows to never be like his parents, and keeps this inner vow to become a millionaire. A young woman experiences sexual trauma as a teen, and chooses a career that…

European Union a state, or what else distinguishes it from other International Organizations

The primary question concerning global organizations as a medium of global governance relates towards the quantity and excellence of this governance within an era where we now have an overdeveloped global economy as well as an under-developed global polity (Ougaard and Higgott, 2002). There's a powerful disconnect amid governance, being an efficient and effective collective solution-seeking process within a given problem-area, and governance being the democratic legitimacy of policy formation. It has made possible the debate regarding 'legitimacy shortfalls' in main global organizations. Furthermore, governance has turned into a hosting analogy determining non-traditional performers (non-condition performers for example NGOs and their local and international associations) that participate as portable agents extending and expanding policy understanding, which is far more advanced and sophisticated than the traditional, elitist, government activities. The interest in global (as well as the regional)…

Darwin Comes of Age

o understand Robert Wright, it is first necessary to define evolutionary psychology, which is the foundation of Wright's theory. Evolutionary psychology contends that most, if not all, of human behavior can be understood by the interests of internal psychological mechanisms. hese internal mechanisms are adaptations, or products of natural selection that helped human ancestors survive and reproduce. Evolutionary psychology looks at the challenges early humans faced in their hunter-gatherer environments and the problem-solving they went through to meet those challenges. Based on these problem-solving adaptations, it then establishes the common roots of ancestral behavior and, especially related to Wright's book, how these common behavioral roots are observed and acted upon today. Human behavior, just like physical traits, has passed on from generation to the next. In their brains humans have specific knowledge that helps them adapt to the environment. he brain is subject to natural selection…

This is the same in our lives, because if we remain steadfast in out faith, our suffering can only serve to further God's work in our lives. Paul's example also highlights our responsibilities to each other, because through our own example we can help other Christians that might be facing the same kind of difficulty as us.

In the next few passages, Paul goes on to discuss something that has undoubtedly crossed the mind of any Christian facing extreme difficult, which is the idea that it might just be better to be done with the world and live eternally in heaven. Paul says that "for to me, living is Christ and dying is gain," to the point that "I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you"…

Wilson, a student of public administration, favored more governmental regulation and action during a time when large monopolies still existed. He saw the role of public administration as "government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself" (Wilson 235). The pendelum swung, though, and the government was blamed for many of the ills that caused the Great Depression. Franklin oosevelt, despite being called draconian, knew that he had to launch programs that would have a quick effect upon the struggling economy; resulting the New Deal -- a complex, interlocking set of programs designed to produce jobs, economic recovery, and fiscal reform of banking and Wall Street -- exactly what was needed, it seems to turn the Titanic in a new direction (Badger). Then, of course, came the war, which stimulated the economy like nothing else,…

Here we have an account of the definitive formation of the twelve-tribe league incorporating people who may well have had ancient ties with Israelite tribes but who only now pledge their undivided allegiance to the God of Israel."

Thus, Shechem is, according to Hillers, one of the most important place for the Covenant renewal, since it was the first that was witnessed by the united Israelite tribes.

John Van Seters, on the other hand, offers a different explanation for the origins of the text in Joshua 24. He concludes that the resemblances in form between the Covenant at Shechem and the Deuteronomy Covenant makes it plausible that the Joshua 24 has to be just an addition to the Deuteronomy work:

There is only one solution to this dilemma and that is that Joshua 24.1-27 was composed as an addition to the Dtr. work. It is post-Dtr. And was inserted before…

The Mechanical Clock has been invented in Europe in the 13th century, and, despite of the fact that it had been obvious that it would bring benefits to the world, it received little to no recognition from outside of Europe.

Printing has been invented by the Chinese in the ninth century and later perfected by the Europeans, as the Chinese did not seem interested in the act. The Europeans became fond of printing and millions of books had been printed in just a short amount of time. The Islam did not seem to be interested in having the Koran printed, nor did it seem interested in having printing present in their territory. The Asian world also appeared to be reluctant from accepting printing for the important technological advancement that it had been. The Chinese apparently treated every European invention with lack of enthusiasm because of the fact that they did…

At nnocent right from onset, they have embraced customer feedback as a tool to drive its product, brand values and strategic direction. They have engaged the services of the customers in brand naming through an easy and interactive channel of communication to take their advices in every activity of the company in order to stay abreast with the ever changing customer tastes and preferences. This long-term perspective is a characteristic of leadership style as compared to a manager whose goals are short-term and works towards achieving short-term goal with unclear vision into the future.

Managers have always relied on control to handle their duties whereas leaders inspire trust on people. At innocent the employees are empowered and they have embraced the culture of creativity, the employees feel involved in every aspect of the company's decision making hence a sense of company-wide commitment to success. The company has monthly and weekly…

Good researchers tend to pull methods out of a tool kit as they are needed" (2006, p. 54). Notwithstanding these criticisms and constraints, though, most social researchers seem to agree that classification by some type of research paradigm is a useful approach based on the need to determine which approach is best suited for a given research enterprise. In this regard, Corby concludes that, "The contested nature of research makes it impossible and unhelpful to ignore the different aims and purposes of various research projects and the methods and approaches being used to carry them out" (2006, p. 54). Therefore, the different aims and purposes of the positivist research paradigm, the constructivist research paradigm and the pragmatic research paradigm are discussed further below.

Positivist Research Paradigm

The positivist research paradigm is a quantitative-based approach that generally seeks to identify trends and patterns that can be used to formulate predictions concerning…