Of Kind and Cruel Fates Essay Example for Free

Of Kind and Cruel Fates Essay Irony, in its essence, is the humor of contradiction. It is contradiction, in the sense that where we would expect events to lean on one way, events instead completely take the opposite direction. A crude example would be where a string of freak accidents occur at a factory where the manager is showing off to his potential clients that his company is â€Å"accident-free†. Irony is humorous because if one saw it with impartiality, one would find it funny. Having a car accident right after a road is â€Å"improved† to avoid further accidents, would be funny. To study irony further, one could study an average persons sense of humor. While as a child, he may delight in the curiosities of the environment, eventually he becomes adjusted to seeing it everyday, and eventually his enjoyment of it fades. Humor takes on a different characteristic for him. There is the slapstick comedy, where he finds the antics of the performers as funny and absurd, and there is the situational comedy, where he finds funny ordinary people falling to ridiculous situations. The common thread to this humor is that it attacks at something. Whether it is to ridicule a person behaving out of the social norm (as the slapstick), or to ridicule a persons belief or principle that is generally viewed as absurd (the parody), the higher the degree of abuse at the object of humor, the funnier. Irony, then, is humorous in the sense that it attacks something, through its contradiction. As an impartial viewer, we may find funny things that we know to be true as envisioned by the ironic set-up, but which is obscured in the minds of those who are involved in the irony. Humor moreover has intrinsic values it seeks to instill to its impartial witnesses, and consequently irony occurs as some way to inform the viewer of a cosmic lesson. We can delve in this further through the study of three stories, Tartuffe, The Princess of Cleves, and Nathan the Wise. There are several ironic situations that occur throughout the play Tartuffe. The story revolves around a household scandalized by having its head (the father) entertain and welcome as part of the family a man who openly and vocally shows his displeasure at what he deems as vices borne by the various members of the family and the house. One of the first ironic situations occurs with the son, Damis, who hides in the room while Tartuffe has a private conversation with his mother, Elmire. His intention is to unmask Tartuffe to his father as a hypocrite and get him out of the house (Moliere, 39-46). When he finally sees evidence of the mans scandalous behavior towards his mother and reveals it to his father, not only does his father not believe (owing to the hypocrites skillful use of words), but has Damis instead kicked out and even encourages Tartuffe to continue his scandalous behavior towards his wife, in order to spite his family (47-51). The humor in the situation centered on how big a fool the father was to believe in Tartuffes virtue, and an even bigger fool not to see the truth when it is right in front of him. This is further stressed in the next ironic situation, where after Orgon (the father) finally realizes the extent of his friends deceit, he tries to tell his mother, who was also fooled by the hypocrite. For all his protestations she does not believe him until she sees it herself (Moliere, 68-71). The irony is that where he once ignored the loud protests of his family, likewise his mother does not believe him, even for his loud protests. The final ironic twist, however, turns out for the good as the hypocrite Tartuffe, having been unmasked and set his plans for revenge, intrigues on the King and plans to have them all arrested, only to have him as the object of arrest, as the King was â€Å"wise† to his intrigues (77-80). The play has these alternating reversal of fortunes, and its ironic humor attacks two things: that blind faith without reason in open Virtue is folly, and that any malice masked in virtue never remains unpunished. A more tragic tale of irony is that of the Princess of Cleves. Introduced to a court as Madam Chartres, she wins the affection of the Prince of Cleves, who endeavor to marry her despite the protests of his father; she falls, however for someone else, the Duke Nemours (Lafayette, 15-17). The story then centers around him trying to find the opportunity to confess his love, and she, now married, desperately tries to stave off his affections while suppressing hers. We do not see the irony unfold until the very end: the Princess anguishes over her affection for the Duke throughout her marriage, but following the death of her husband suddenly she has a change of heart and is convinced that her husband was a far better man than the Duke (101-107). It is only after the husband dies and they finally have an opportunity to be together does she decide not to be with the Duke. The irony here attacks the notion that love borne from adulterous intention will eventually bear fruit. It might have been attack towards the growing acceptance of the public towards the notion of infidelity, (almost every character is involved in an affair with someone else) and their giving it idealistic fervor. The Princess of Cleves, despite the best of her intentions, continued to bear her love to someone else, and pined for that other person, and consequently, in her husbands death she realized her folly too late, and chose to suffer the rest of her life in that guilt. Nathan the Wise has such a complicated string of ironies, that one who skims through even the slightest of details would not appreciate the ironies that eventually occur. Originally, the story of the Jewish merchant Nathan centered around the Muslim conqueror Saladin trying to fool him out of his money—and this tale has found itself in the pages of Boccaccios Decameron. Nathan answers so skillfully that ironically it was Saladin who was put to shame by his own question and humbled before the Jew (Lessing, 90-97). This story is, however, expanded by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and this encounter between the Egyptian conqueror and the Jew becomes the main theme. The tale then revolves around a Templar, who was pardoned by Saladin for the reason that he resembled the conquerors brother (Lessing, 36); the consequences of his rescue of a Jewish maiden (and subsequent encounter of the grateful surrogate father Nathan), and the intrigues of the Patriarch who would have him either kill Saladin or turn over Nathan, who he found had raised a Christian child to the Jewish faith (the same Jewess he rescued) (37-40). The irony, from an impartial point of view, might have been to some degree absurd. The Templar, in almost the fashion of Oedipus, tries desperately to seek the truth, and unmask what he sees in his prejudice as malice committed by the Jew Nathan (Lessing, 109-127). And, also in the fashion of Oedipus, not only does he discover that the girl he was trying to save (and hope to marry) was his sister, but Saladin who he would have killed had he agreed to the Patriarch, was his uncle after all (165-172). The irony also hits Saladin, as his pardoning the Templar Conrad because he looked like his brother, redounds to the truth that Conrad was his brothers son. While the ironic twist might seem ridiculous to the trained eye, in the sense it fits to the lesson first imparted by Nathan to Saladin: that all men are equal before God, regardless of Faith. This is a happier chide at the Medieval sensibility of hostility between Faiths. Irony is humorous, because we find that the contradiction it creates makes sense. We might have felt our sensibilities offended when we saw that the Princess of Cleves did not end up with the Duke Nemours, but the cosmic twist was to show to us that infidelity was wrong. We would have preferred that the Templar should have instead ended up marrying the Jewess, but the irony was there to impart the lesson that prejudice has, after all, no place in the world. We sometimes do not find ironic circumstances that funny, as if we lived the life of Duke Nemours or became as aghast as the Templar Conrad. But eventually, we will learn that the contradiction was to impart to us that our plans may go completely the other way, because they may not have been right in the first place. And, the wiser we become to this truth, the more we will realize that irony, though it might strike sad for us, has a reason. The better we accept this, the more we will be prepared to just take a step back, take a view of the bigger picture, and laugh. WORKS CITED Lafayette, Madame de. The Princess of Cleves. New York: Project Gutenberg. 27 Sept. 2008 http://www. gutenberg. org/files/467/467. txt. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Nathan the Wise. New York: Page, Curtis. Project Gutenberg. 01 Mar. 2003. http://www. gutenberg. org/dirs/etext03/natws10. txt. Moliere, Jean Baptiste. Tartuffe. New York: Project Gutenberg. 26 Oct. 2008. http://www. gutenberg. org/files/2027/2027. txt.

Beluga Whales :: essays research papers

A. Swimming. 1. In general, beluga whales are slow swimmers. They commonly swim about 3 to 9 kph (1.9-5.6 mph). They are, however, capable of sustaining a maximum speed of 22 kph (13.6 mph) for as long as 15 minutes (Nowak, 1991; Ridgway and Harrison, 1981). 2. Belugas can swim forward and backward (Nowak, 1991). 3. Beluga whales often swim at depths barely covering their bodies (Ridgway and Harrison, 1981). B. Diving. 1. Beluga whales typically don't dive very deep, usually to about 20 m (66 ft.). Belugas are not generally thought of as deep-diving marine mammals, but they are capable of diving to extreme depths. Under experimental conditions a trained beluga whale repeatedly dove to 400 m (1,312 ft.) with ease, and even dove to a depth of 647 m (2,123 ft.) (Nowak, 1991; Ridgway et. al., 1984). 2. A typical dive usually lasts three to five minutes, but belugas can stay submerged for as long as 15 minutes (Nowak, 1991; Ridgway and Harrison, 1981). 3. In estuaries the usual diving sequence lasts about two minutes; the sequence consists of five to six shallow dives followed by a one-minute-long deeper dive (Ridgway and Harrison, 1981). 4. All marine mammals have physiological adaptations for diving. These adaptations enable a beluga whale to conserve oxygen while it's under water. a. Beluga whales, like other marine mammals, have a slower heart rate while diving. A beluga whale's heart rate slows from about 100 to about 12 to 20 beats per minute during a dive (Ridgway, 1972). b. When diving, blood is shunted away from tissues tolerant of low oxygen levels toward the heart, lungs, and brain, where oxygen is needed. c. Beluga whales retain more oxygen in their blood than most mammals do. A beluga whale's blood volume percentage (5.5%) is higher than a land mammal's, and similar to a Weddell seal's (a deep-diving marine mammal). One study found a female beluga to have 16.5 l (17.4 qt.) of oxygen in her blood (Ridgway et. al., 1984). d. The muscle of beluga whales has a high content of the oxygen-binding protein myoglobin. Myoglobin stores oxygen and helps prevent muscle oxygen deficiency. C. Respiration. 1. A beluga whale breathes through a single blowhole, a modified nasal opening. a. The beluga whale holds its breath while under water. b. It opens its blowhole and begins to exhale just before reaching the surface of the water. c.

A Healthy Bulk

Nowadays, various supplements are taken due to the restricted and deficient nutrients as a result of widespread poor diet and environmental changes. But one of the most common health problems all over the world is obesity. The bigger question is how to lose weight, either naturally or artificially. Well, most of the times, it is better said than done. Exercise or increased activity, lifestyle changes, and healthy eating habits result to one thing – natural weight loss. But the real question that remains is how to maintain the new, lean body and how to keep losing weight while keeping it off in an invigorating and healthy manner.High fiber diet is a modified balanced diet with contents higher in fiber. Fiber is also known as the ‘forgotten nutrient’, ‘bulk’ or ‘roughage’. Aside from a healthy way of losing weight and preventing some of the digestive problems, it reduces a certain amount of sugar and fats in the bloodstream. Of all dietary management schemes, macrobiotic or high-fiber diet is one of the diet plans that answer the lingering question of how to remain toned and healthy. Maintaining a long-term weight loss is very challenging. Duyff stated ‘It is true that most of us need more fiber to promote good health.’A high fiber diet is not only for promoting weight loss since macrobiotics are present on this type of diet. It is one good way of boosting positive changes outside and inside the body. Fibers don’t supplicate calories because the body does not usually absorb fibers. These lead to the incorporation of low calorie group of food such as whole grains, vegetables, legumes, and fruits in weight loss diets. Abundance of fiber is found on the outer surface of this food group that is why using or eating whole grains and unpeeled fruits and vegetables is encouraged as much as possible.The more the food is in its natural form (unrefined), the higher is its fiber content. According to Peckenpau gh and Poleman: ‘If the adult has learned to like a variety of plant-based, high fiber foods and sugar- free drinks such as water, obesity is less likely to occur as caloric requirements decrease from having sedentary job or being incapacitated from illness or from aging. ’ It is important to establish a regular eating schedule in instituting a high fiber diet. Basically, breakfast should be the heaviest meal while supper is the lightest.Unrefined foods are recommended rather than processed or refined food. Legumes and nuts can be milk and fish substitutes. Leafy vegetables should be included in meals as frequently as possible and drinking as much water, too, is advised, thus, increasing fluid intake more. Fruits such as apple, banana, guava, star apple and the likes should be avoided if there is constipation. Instead, whole segments of papaya, pineapple, prunes, watermelon and oranges can be eaten. During high fiber diet, intake of alcoholic, carbonated and caffeine be verages should also be avoided.According to the fiber theory of weight reduction, fibers impede the intestines in absorbing fats and by being a bulk or roughage in the stomach, it gives satisfaction while caloric intake is reduced. David Reuben, a highly acclaimed author/psychiatrist stated that importance of modifying a typical American diet to decreasing cholesterol intake and correct the lack of natural fibers. High fiber diet can also prevent one of the leading cancers in the US, colon cancer. Today, there are considerable studies conducted for the outcome of high fiber diet.Here is what Assembly of life sciences has to say: ‘Most epidemiological studies on fiber have examined the hypothesis that high fiber diets protects against colorectal cancer. Results of correlation and case-control studies of dietary fiber have sometimes supported and sometimes contradicted this hypothesis. ’ The committee had also stated there are no conclusive evidence that can prove fiber a s a complete inhibitor of colon cancer though there is a possibility that some high fiber ingredients can help fight this cancer.If ever such thing happens, researches propose that only some of the specific elements and not the whole fiber itself are responsible for the occurrence. Though there is no monumental belief that this type of diet cannot actually prevent colon cancer nor believed to have a compelling effect on weight reduction, on the other hand, unlike other dietary schemes, it does not bear immediate health threats and may subsequently be of great help in prolonging healthy weight management.

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang Essay - 1123 Words

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang The Chinese people have experienced rapid change, in government and culture in the 20th century. Although the common people seemed to have risen up against oppression from the ruling class, liberty and equality often remains out of their grasp. For centuries the dynastic cycle has dominated the culture and collective consciousness of the Chinese people. This process is characterized by unification, followed by prosperity and success, followed by corruption and instability, and finally rebellion and overthrow. This gives way to a new dynasty that was said to have received the mandate of heaven. This cycle, in some ways, ended with the fall of the Qing dynasty. This marked the end of over 2000 years of†¦show more content†¦She was born to parents whose marriage had been arranged, they were probably never in love, neither before, nor after the wedding. Yu-fangs mother was not even given a name, and her husband was 6 years younger than her and only a boy of fourteen at t he time of their marriage. She was expected to help raise her husband which was expected of a Chinese bride. Yu-fangs feet were bound when she was the age of two. This was done by her own mother, and was an extremely painful process. Jung Chang said, My Grandmother screamed in agony and begged her to stop. Her mother had to stick a cloth into her mouth to gag her. My grandmother passed out repeatedly from the pain. (24) This painful tradition is one of the worst examples mistreatment of women that was considered a necessity. Yu- fang was born in 1909. This was near the end of the Manchu Empire, which had been ruling the nation for over 260 years. This was also a time when threat of Japanese invasion was a constant reality in the region of Manchuria, which is where Yixian, the familys hometown, was located. Yu-fang became a concubine to an official to th e Metropolitan Police of the Warlord government of Peking. Her father arranged for Yu-fang and General Xue to meet (making it seem accidental to preserve his family honor) and received a considerableShow MoreRelatedWild Swans By Jung Chang2008 Words   |  9 PagesJung Chang’s Wild Swans combines a first person narrative and real historical events to create a story that is both compelling and informative. Though the author tells different tales in the three parts of the book, the themes of violence, oppression, and abuse of power remain static throughout. In retelling stories from three generations, Chang depicts the hardships faced by citizens of opposite genders and different ages in twentieth-century Communist China. Through the author’s vivid details,Read MoreAnalysis Of The Book Wild Swans By Jung Chang Essay1423 Words   |  6 PagesFamily loyalty in China has had a tumultuous past filled with fluctuation between remaining loyal to the state, yet also remain ing loyal to blood relatives. In the autobiography that also serves as a biography, Wild Swans, by Jung Chang, this is seen. The book, which outlines the biographies of the author’s grandmother and mother, as well as her own autobiography, gives an interesting look into the lives of the Chinese throughout the 20th century. This book is beyond eye opening, and is trulyRead MoreWild Swans : Three Daughters Of China By Jung Chang1633 Words   |  7 PagesMichael Accurso The book, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, is a intimate memoir and a piece of history that shows life through generations. This book shows us the change and evolution of China through the lives of three women. 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