The Greatest Generation Essay Example for Free

The Greatest Generation Essay It had been a turbulant twenty years for our young American and the worst and the best weve yet to come. On December 7th 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Across America on that Saturday afternoon the stunning news from the radio electrified the nation and changed the lives of all who heard It. The young Americans of this time constituted a generation birth marked for greatness. A generation of Americans that would take its place in American history. It may be historically premature to Judge the greatest generation but indisputably here are common traits that cannot be denied Its a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor. A legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witnesses to sacrifices of the highest order. Tom Brokaw, the author of The Greatest Generation illustrates that l think this is the greatest generation any society has ever produced. With such a bold statement, and a sweeping Judgement, since then he has restated it on my occasions. While he is periodically challenged on premise, he believes he has the tacts on his side. Yet he doesnt have facts, he has opinions that help bulld up from his foundation of hls statement. Many are from people who had lived during World War II. They tell how the war had impacted on their lives. What they think about their Generation. Martha Settle Putney stated (pg. 185) l knew when World War II approached it would be a terrible thing but afterward I was so gratefuln_lt provided opportunity Daniel Inouye believed the same thing as he stated (pg. 49) The one time the nation got ogether was World War II, We stood as one. we spoke as one, we clenched our fists as one.

A Sunday Night Tradition Essay -- Essays Papers

A Sunday Night Tradition Sunday nights are a special time around my house back at home in Wheaton, Illinois. They are a time when my family all gets together and has dinner as a group. It is a time when we all get to talk and share our stories of how our weeks went, what is to come in the following week, and other various topics. This whole Sunday night ritual always takes place in our dining room. The dining room is attached to our kitchen; it is a small room, just large enough to fit our large oak dining room table. Around the table sits six large, old, creaky chairs. Week after week, year after year, we are always in the same formation around that table. My father sits at the head of the table, it is a position that illustrates respect and is furthest away from the kitchen, perhaps saying he wants nothing to do with the cooking and cleaning up duties. He is always first to sit down and the last to leave the table, because he enjoys his time with the family so much he wants to make it as long as possible. My mother sits on the opposite end of the table, the closest seat to the kitchen, which makes perfect sense because she is always the last person to be seated and is constantly getting up to get something from the kitchen. On the other side of the table sits my little nine-year old brother, he sits next to my dad because he is always in his shadow, he looks up to him and imitates nearly everything he does. He sits next to the furthest from the kitchen bec...

Poetry by Gwen Harwood Essay

â€Å"Ideas and the way those ideas are presented are what makes a poets’ work distinctive. Choose 2 poems from 1 poet and describe how they show the distinctive characteristics of this poets’ work. Gwen Harwood skilfully employs language techniques to explore a variety of distinctive themes and ideas in her poems. This is seen in ‘In The Park’ where Harwood explores the human condition through the simplistic and dull life of her female protagonist, while in ‘Prize Giving’ she explores multiple universal themes through her male protagonist Professor Eisenbart. Harwood effectively establishes a simplistic image through her title ‘In the Park’ to imply the mundane simplicity of the place, the people and the idea. This is enhanced through the simplistic first line as the woman â€Å"sits in the park†. Here we are introduced to the protagonist with her depressingly dull and monotonous life, clearly portrayed through Hardwood’s image in describing how the protagonist’s â€Å"clothes are out of date†. This not only portrays her shabby physical appearance but also the idea that she lives in the past and that time has passed her by. The use of negative connotation describing how her â€Å"two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt† adds to the depressing mood, before Hardwood goes on to tell us that â€Å"A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt†, helping to further reinforce her lack of purpose in life. The double entendre of the persona being â€Å"too late† on two levels effectively conveys that she is â€Å"too late† to show disinterest to him and that it is â€Å"too late† for her and this lost love to regain a close relationship. Harwood’s clever employment of the cliched expressions of â€Å"how nice† and â€Å"time holds great surprises† conveys how dull and pointless their conversation is to reinforce the superficiality of the situation and the pointlessness of their reunion as his â€Å"neat head† has no remnant of communication left to share with her. Furthermore, the woman’s low self esteem is portrayed as she interprets his of the words â€Å"but for the grace of God†¦ † as his relieved sense of having escaped her monotonous lifestyle. The vague and unimportance of their conversation is enhanced as â€Å"they stand a while in flickering light† whilst â€Å"rehearsing the children’s names and birthdays. † Harwood implies the facade of interest the man takes in the children who â€Å"whine, and bicker†, yet ironically the woman is talking to the man’s â€Å"departing smile†. Her uninviting and uninspiring lifestyle which is perhaps causing him to leave. A sense of motherly love is represented in he poem as the woman is â€Å"nursing the youngest child†. The image of the Madonna-like child on her implies something very different when we see her as she â€Å"sits staring at her feet†, her apathy replaces caring and the boredom of her life replaces her joys of motherly love. The final line of â€Å"to the wind she says, â€Å"they have eaten me alive. â€Å"†, conveys that sadly he is gone and that she is alone, with no one to talk to but the wind, to whic h she voices the truth of her pain and disillusionment. The ideas from â€Å"In the Park† are also reflected similarly in another of Harwood’s poems, ‘Prize Giving† where the arrogant Professor Eisenbart is contrasted to the dominating Titian-haired girl. The poem immediately establishes Professor Eisenbart as an abhorrent character through the use of connotative language in â€Å"rudely declined†. The professor is implied as stodgy and old fashioned character â€Å"when pressed with dry scholastic jokes† where he changes his mind and decides to â€Å"grace their humble platform†. This portrays the humble status of the school in contrast to his arrogance and superiority, which is further exemplified â€Å"when he appeared† and â€Å"the girls whirred with an insect nervousness†, implying that he sees himself as a light they’re attracted to. This sound imagery not only suggests the mood of interest in him but also the sound of the assembly as a collective. The head is differentiated â€Å"in humble black† who â€Å"flapped round and steered her guess, superb in silk and fur†, which characterizes her as comparatively less ego-centric that the â€Å"resplendently dressed guest. Alternately, she feels a sense of pride in others around her and in what she is doing when it is clear that Professor Eisenbart concerns only for himself. In the third stanza, the girls are referred to as â€Å"half-hearted blooms tortured to form the school’s elaborate crest† which creates an image of the flower arrangement that is the assembly. This imagery personifies the girls as reluctant to represent the school, but also symbolises their innocent flowering into womanhood which makes â€Å"Eisenbart scowl in violent distaste†, conveying that his indifference has turned into revulsion. The simile when Eisenbart â€Å"then recomposed his features to their best advantage: deep in thought, with one hand placed like Rodin’s Thinker† further enhances his self image of conceit and superficial self control for appearance sake as he stages this pose in this allusion to the classic thinker statue. Eisenbart vies the girls as a â€Å"mosaic of young heads, Blonde, black, mouse brown† as all he sees is a colour pattern of heads and does not acknowledge the girls individually. However, this is changed when â€Å"underneath a light†¦ ne girl sat grinning at him, her hand bent under her chin in mockery of his own†. Here, a spotlight is shone, in Eisenbarts’ mind, onto the titian haired girl who shows an amused perspective as she seems to interrupt him as no one else does. His closer observation now beyond the â€Å"mosaic† shoes a flicker of interest in him, as opposed to his previous disinterest. He remains uncaring and unintereste d by the â€Å"host of virgin hands† until once again he is challenged by the â€Å"girl with titian hair† who â€Å"stood up, hitched at a stocking, winked at near-by friends†. He notes all this detail move by move as implied by the punctuation in her attitude of directness, self-composure, self-composure and ultimately intention of some act to shatter his power. The youthful titian haired girl challenges â€Å"his calm age and power† of knowledge, experience and authority as she transforms before him and becomes a powerful person in her passion and her arrogance well beyond his own. From his indifference, he is now the â€Å"suffered† victim to â€Å"her strange eyes, against reason dark†. Harwood uses figurative language here to emphasize the change of his perspective as the power is now turning to her. Here there is a challenge between his logical sense of reason and the seeing â€Å"strange eyes† of this titian haired girl. They are odd to him because they allude the sense of reason that he lives by and she defies. The power and passion of the girl has â€Å"forged his rose-hot dream† and his own power is a fake, a forgery, in contrast to hers. The final stanza in this poem reveals that â€Å"age and power† can be challenged as Eisenbarts’ false superiority is seen through the â€Å"eyes† of the titian haired girl. Synecdoche is employed when Eisenbart is â€Å"summoned by arrogant hands† to show the girls power. She is symbolised by the power of her music, characterized as â€Å"titian-haired† to imply her passionate nature and her â€Å"eyes† that see through Eisenbarts’ superficial superiority and arrogance. Her power is further conveyed as â€Å"Eisenbart teased his gown†, showing his sexual unease and realisation that his self image is weakened. His perspective changes as the young and fiery girl defeats him by deflating his self- image and superiority. Eisenbart now sees himself differently as he â€Å"peered into a trophy which suspended his image upside down: a sage fool trapped†. His composure has left him and his self-image is reflected in her trophy as he is mirrored upside down, symbolically reversed and up-ended. The oxymoron in â€Å"sage fool† demonstrates that he is controlled by her power. The ideas presented in Gwen Harwood’s poetry is made distinctive through her use of a variety of themes and language techniques. The powerful ideas represented in â€Å"In the Park† and â€Å"Prize Giving† explore multiple universal themes and give the reader a better insight into the human condition.

Industrial Revolution Essay - 1152 Words

Slavery, new energy sources, global trade, and technology all contributed to Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper emphasize the importance of slavery for the development of the Industrial revolution and capitalism. However, as James Carter, Richard Warren, and Robert Marks demonstrate, global trade and new technology were just as important factors as slavery because they increased both the efficiency of production and demand for British-made goods. Carter and Warren classically connect the idea of capitalism to the Industrial revolution because the Industrial Revolution created an influx of wealth that allowed people to, while the other historians don’t clearly connect the idea of capitalism to the Industrial†¦show more content†¦Burbank and Cooper then argue that due to this surge in food, people were able to use the land for other needs, such as manufacturing goods. Additionally, prior to the discovery and use of new energy sources, such as water energy and coal, all of the energy people had came from the sun. People mostly used trees as energy, burning them to get heat energy. This was considered the biological old regime. Efficiently, Marks argues that the discovery of coal energy was exactly what was needed to propel humans out of the biological old regime and into the Industrial revolution. The Industrial revolution could not have occurred without the extra energy provided by coal. Coal allowed for the population to grow because there was now more energy floating around. Carter and Warren both argue another essential use of coal for Britain was for powering their railroads and steamships. Prior to coal energy, the boats relied on winds to reach their destinations. Relying on wind takes a much longer amount of time to get places, so coal increased the productivity of global trade as well. In contrast, Burbank and Cooper do not emphasize the importance of coal. Burbank and Cooper focus more on the slave trade and less on coal, which really facilitated the slave trade in the first place. An additional important factor in the development of the Industrial revolution was global trade. Originally, India was the country that was making theShow MoreRelatedEssay on Industrial Revolution1489 Words   |  6 Pagesenvironment. Industrial revolution was so fundamental that it’s often compared with the transition from farming to stock raising, which began several thousand years before the birth of Christ. Considering the uses of natural resources, can human history be dived up into three pieces of varying length; hundreds of thousands years before â€Å"the agricultural revolution†, thousands of years between this and the Industrial revolution and the two hundreds years after the beginning of Industrial revolution. 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To begin, industrialization was the instigatorRead MoreThe Industrial Revolution Essay847 Words   |  4 PagesThe Industrial Revolution During the 1800s, phenomenal changes took place in America. These changes would impact our society incredibly for years to come and even still in the present. The major changes that took place were in transportation and industry. American society expanded so much in the early 1800s that it very well could have been the only time in history where this happened in such a short amount of time. From steamboats to railroads and from textile mills to interchangeable parts