Friday, January 24, 2020

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis :: essays research papers

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader By: C.S. Lewis   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are three main characters in the story, Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace. Lucy and Edmund are brother and sister and Eustace is their cousin. Edmund is a young teenager, very smart and very kind. Lucy is in her mid teens as well, she is a very happy person. Lucy is always trying to help people with there problems.The setting is first the early 1900’s in England and then in Narnia the fictional world the story is based on.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The story begins with Edmund and Lucy sitting in there room talking about Narnia. Eustace is listening outside their door and comes in to make fun of them. There is a picture of a ship on the wall and as Eustace calls Narnia fake water begins coming into the room out of the picture. The next thing they know they are in the ocean and the ship is at there side. The ship is a group of Narnians sailing east looking for the seven lost lords of Narnia. Caspain the king of Narnia is leading the search group along with Ripecheep the leader of the talking mice.( In Narnia animals talk and walk around like humans) Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace since came into the world in the ocean they have to go along on the rescue mission. They come to an island and they had to find food and supplies. Eustace decided to go rest for awhile and finds a place up a hill. When he wakes from his nap there is a thick fog and he thinks he knows the way that he came from. He walks down into a valley and sees a pond and decides to take a drink. He sees a cave and decides to go in. Inside the cave there is gold, jewels, crowns, diamond, all kinds of treasure. He puts a bracelet on and while he was sitting in a pile of gold he fell back asleep. When he woke up his arm was very sores and noticed the band was now very tight. Eustace walked over to the pond to take a drink and see s the relexion of a dragon in the water. He had been turned to a dragon by taking the dragons gold. He is a dragon for a few days then Aslan(Aslan is the great emperor of Narnia) comes to visit him and changes him back.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” Essay

What would the world be like if mankind disappeared? This is the theme of Ray Bradbury’s story â€Å"There Will Come Soft Rains†. All of the characters in the story are machines, which through personification take the place of human characters. The theme of man’s destruction reverberates throughout the story. Bradbury uses personification to describe the mechanical creations of man that eventually lead to the story’s theme of the destruction of mankind. There are no human characters at all in the story; instead, there are machines with human characteristics. Miller notes that personification is constantly used to describe the house’s actions (1). This is seen in the first line of the story,† In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, seven o’ clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would† (Bradbury 76). The distress of the voice-clock gives it a humanoid impression, which allows it to take the place of human characters. Another interesting example of personification is seen in the way that Bradbury describes the robotic mice. â€Å"Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience† (Bradbury 77). However, machines are incapable of feelings. Hicks observes that readers are reminded that the rodent readers are mechanical, and that feelings-â€Å"those highly praised human emotions†-cannot exist in machines (234). In fact, there is only one living character in the whole story. As Jennifer Hicks points out, the only live being in the house is the dog, who enters mid-story (234). The dog is not very seemly. â€Å"The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud† (Bradbury 77). It is pathetic and dying, much like the human race. Life after the destruction of man is the main theme of the story. It is hinted in the story that an atomic bomb was the cause of man’s demise. Bradbury does not blatantly tall the reader that an atomic catastrophe occurred, but reveals it by describing the house and its surroundings (Miller 6). The reader is told that, â€Å"The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles† (Bradbury 77). The â€Å"ruined city† and â€Å"radioactive glow† give readers enough clues to  conclude that atomic warfare was the cause of man’s downfall. While it is known that the earth is now empty, Bradbury also indicates that it was empty before the bomb. Peltier suggests that this world was empty even before the destruction, with mechanical mice vacuuming and a sing-song clock telling time. The dull, mechanical world was empty long before people were taken from it (238). This can be seen in the nursery, where â€Å"Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy† (Bradbury 78). Children do not even go outside to enjoy nature, but watch it on their mechanical walls, their lives growing more and more hollow and empty. Another point that Bradbury makes is that if man disappeared, nothing would care, or even notice. Peltier explains that â€Å"The title of the story, taken from the poem quoted within it, suggests that if humankind were gone, nature would not only endure, but it would also not even notice our disappearance† (237). Sara Teasdale’s poem best illustrates this. â€Å"And not one will know of the war, not one/Will care at last when it is done./Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,/If mankind perished utterly;/ And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn/ Would scarcely know that we were gone (Bradbury 79). Indeed, life would go on after mankind, and would go on peacefully. Therefore, Bradbury’s use of personification describe the machines that eventually lead to the story’s theme of mankind’s destruction. Personification allows the machines to show us what the people who owned the house were like: cold, impersonal, and oblivious to the outside- characteristics that led to both man and machine’s downfall. The author uses the story’s theme of the destruction of man to show readers the effects of becoming too dependent on machines and withdrawing from nature and the world. The chilling thing about Bradbury’s story is the acknowledgment of human dependency on machinery today, and the realization that in such a technologically advanced world, the story could easily become reality.

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Ethical Considerations At Hand It May Preserve The Company...

The intent of this paper is to critically analyze ethical considerations to support whether or not to report small errors to higher management. On the one hand it may preserve the company’s business and reputation; on the other hand it may affect potential advancement opportunities for the employee in question. The issue at hand is determining whether or not newly hired Ben should notify his supervisor and CFO of small errors found after sending the reports he created for them. Since this is a recurrent issue, the problem is that by doing so, he runs the risk of jeopardizing his position. There is an underlying condition, which consists in distinguishing between small and critical errors. In fact, trying to solve the issue of whether†¦show more content†¦This compares to critical errors in Ben’s case. Similarly to this definition, the definition of a â€Å"small error† begs a number of questions: - Where do these errors come from? - What is Ben’s proficiency in Microsoft Excel? - Can anyone outside the company audit the company’s books? Ben is conflicted as to how to handle errors found in his work because it may jeopardize either his job, or the future of the entire company. This is his first job and he realizes that his responsibilities are overwhelming at times. His reports are an important component of the company’s business, and part of the CFO’s work relies on it. On several instances he has found errors in his reports, and decided to only revise and report those errors he believes to be critical. Small errors, on the other hand, are not as important to require reporting according to him. The case however suggests that Ben is also considering whether or not he should in fact overlook the small errors, which is what I will attempt to answer in this critical thinking analysis. Ben’s position to disregard small errors is understandable in some aspects. In fact, as a newly hired, in his first job, he must be proud of being given such job with great responsibilities. Submitting frequent revisions due to small errors, will make him look incompetent, unreliable, and jeopardize his job. This could mean running the risk of being fired or demoted. In his situation, the most important is to prove himself and show that