Sleepy Hollow Remnants of Times Not So Far Past - Literature Essay Samples

In Washington Irvings The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the theme of haunting is dominant; the haunting itself is purely a human creation and is created solely to meet human needs. Though at times it can seem quite realistic due to emotions evoked through Irvings masterful use of imagery, it is at all times quite fictional, even to the narrator. Haunting is continuously associated with stretches of the imagination, and also mostly with live or animate things: trees, animals, sounds escaping from the wilderness. The idea of haunting, which leads to stories told by the Sleepy Hollow community, begins when there are no answers to curious happenings, or when the given answers are not satisfactory, or even mundane. The idea is then perpetuated when citizens begin to elaborate and incite new notions of ghosts and goblins from the original stories. The haunting begins, however, with supernatural explanations for simple events in the past, such as Andres capture during the war; though this i s a simple and not uncommon event in wartime, Sleepy Hollow is clutching to the past through vivid story telling. The fact that it is storytelling is subtly clear.One of the key ways that the reader can tell that the haunting is fictitiousor at the very least extremely questionableis through the narrators word choice. Though the story is supposed to be an historical account of events that actually occurred in Sleepy Hollow, he often questions the veracity of the haunting. Even at the climactic point in which Ichabod faces the Headless Horseman, the narrator writes that Ichabod beheld (1082) the horsemans disfigured shape, and that it appeared (1083) massive in the darkness. He never uses concrete verbs, such as was, because it is not certain that what Ichabod ascertains is truly what is present. He carefully chooses his diction to simultaneously show what Ichabod is seeing as well as the fact that only he is seeing itit is well possible that it does not exist. He does this str ikingly well in the sentence, Ichabod was horror struck, on perceiving that he was headless (1083). There is no doubt that the protagonist believes completely in what he is seeing, but the use of the word perception is key; it throws doubt upon the believability of Ichabods sense of reality.This false sense of haunting that is seen so clearly through Ichabods eyes manifests itself in particular places within the text. There are various moments in which nature gives him the feeling of being haunted, though it is harmless.Then, as he wended his way, by swamp and stream andawful woodland, . . .every sound of nature, at that witchinghour, fluttered his excited imagination: the moan of thewhip-or-will from the hill side; the boading cry of the treetoad; . . .the dreary hooting of the screech owl. . . (1064)The wilderness scares him, haunts him in a sense. Through the present naturethe shadows cast by trees, the sounds of forest animalsIchabod, like all the other Sleepy Hollow resident s, fears the past. It is the witching hour merely because it is dark outside, and the sounds frighten him merely because he has an excited imagination, and for no real substantial reason. Like the tree and stream that Andre is said to haunt, there is nothing that is really to be fearedmerely shadows and cricket chirps, wind rustling leaves. The fear, however, is a result of the stories that are told, not necessarily of the actual surroundings. That Andre was captured is not a scary story, but that his spirit remains to haunt can be construed as frightening; it is purely imagination, though, that causes these stories to be told in the first place.The unfaithfulness of such stories is revealed toward the end of the tale. The reader is told that Ichabod is indeed alive and well following his supposed abduction from Sleepy Hollow by the Headless Horseman. The residents of the town also come into this knowledge by a farmer that has seen him firsthand. However, the old country wive s maintain to this day, that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means the schoolhouse was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue (1086). The Dutch wives, who are the perpetuators of the haunting stories throughout the text, persist in creating stories that they know to be false. They continually take what little past they have, and turn it into stories so that it is not lost, so that there is a history upon which they can build their present. But because they have so little past, they need to use the present to create a pastthey use what happens to make a new history, a new past, building upon what they have already created.Ichabod is a prime example of this practice. He is clearly still alive, but he is in the history of Sleepy Hollow because he is no longer bodily present. The true reason for his disappearance is not satisfactory and is not exciting enough material with which to make a history, so the Dutch wives concoct their own history, and it becomes truth. Everyone who enters Sleepy Hollow becomes subject to their whimsical tales, and falls into their belief system, no matter however wide awake they may have been before they entered the sleepy region (1060). They cannot be held at fault, however. There is simply so little past that they need to preserve what they have through what is now present, what is now alive. This is shown through the abundance of live and animated haunting imagery. The haunting comes solely from within them, and only manifests itself in these external things. For these people that lack a past, fictitious events become legend, and then those legends become history.

The Controversy Regarding The Practice And Effectiveness...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper is designed to address four major controversies concerning the practice and effectiveness of the current United States education system and discuss potential solutions to these issues. The four controversies we will be addressing are; o Lack of student centered learning o Religion in public schooling o Lack of importance the US government places on higher level education o Need for more focus on thinking 1. The lack of student centered learning is an issue because of the fact that it is not widely known. Student centered learning is a teaching approach that incorporates participating in self-paced learning programs and/or group scenarios, substituting lectures with active learning, leading up to holding the student responsible for his or her own improvements in education. The focus on this kind of learning could greatly improve our education system in America because it makes the students responsible for their success. The teaching of that type of responsibility will make for a more reliable and advanced generation. 2. Religion in public schooling is a major controversy proven by the fact that Americans have been debating the place of God in schools almost repeatedly since public education got its start in the country nearly two hundred years ago. As the United States becomes more religiously diverse, its shared doubt on this issue becomes more prominent. Not even the Supreme Court, with its muddled and unclear ruling on the establishmentShow MoreRelatedEssay on Managed Care1158 Words   |  5 PagesManaged Care To decide on whether or not an issue is considered ethical or moral we need the hard cold facts. Facts expose or explain what is to be decided upon#8212;not what the outcome should be. Decisions regarding health care and mental health issues represent a major portion of ethical and moral choices. 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Everybody knows that the most enthralling stories have a...

Everybody knows that the most enthralling stories have a good villain. A â€Å"good† villain refers to a character who is ruthless, cunning, and an all-around mastermind who keeps the audience guessing. One of the most interesting villains is Iago from William Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago is a villain who has been analyzed for 500 years and still has no clear motivations for his evil acts. Fast forward a few centuries from the time Iago was created and take one of the most interesting characters from the CW’s television series The Vampire Diaries who happens to be the elusive vampire, Katherine Pierce. Both of these villains are similar in their manipulative nature, their motivations, and their impacts on the characters and stories. One of the†¦show more content†¦As the series progresses the audience comes to find out that they are not the first men she had wrapped around her finger, and they are not the last either. Making men fall for her is only one w ay she has manipulated people. Katherine, like Iago, makes people seem like she is their loyal friend until she stabs them in the back. Not only do these two characters share the talent to manipulate, but they are also both very proud of this certain talent that they possess. Not once does either of them show any guilt. â€Å"Iago freely acknowledges what he both is and is not, and revels in his revelry† (Singer). Iago often rejoices when his plan is working (Shakespeare). Katherine also acknowledges w=all the lies she is able to get people to believe about her and is quite proud of it. She is proud of being able to charm men into doing anything for her, Both of the characters show little remorse for all of the lying and manipulating that they do. Another way that Katherine and Iago compare is the fact that neither of their motivations for doing the things they do are always clear. One of the most confusing things about Iago’s character is why he is so determined to ru in Othello’s life. He gives the audience multiple reasons, yet it is not known if any

Digital image analysis of yell Essay Example For Students

Digital image analysis of yell Essay Digital Image Analysis of Yellowstone National ParkIntroductionRemote sensing refers to the tele-observational surveying and mapping of physical, urban and environmental features. Remote Sensing is also a composite of many other subjects such as aerial photography, radar surveying, thermal surveying, weather forecasting and photogrammetry. It has now become quite common practice to use remotely sensed data to take inventory, monitor and develop effective management practices of our natural resources. ObjectiveIt is the purpose of this paper to further enhance the understanding of remotely sensed data in such a way that we may assist the human brain in the extraction and interpretation of this data through digital image analysis data manipulation techniques, such as rectification, enhancement and classification. The application of conventional and non-conventional image enhancement /classification procedures will be applied to an area of The Old Faithful section of the North Fork forest fire within Yellowstone National Park as it existed on September 8, 1988. They will also be applied to Nile Delta region of Egypt. Conventional technology in the context of this paper refers to imagery that is uni-dimensional, that is, it has only one spectral band available for analysis. The term non-conventional will refer to imagery that has multi bands available for manipulation and analysis. Methods of enhancement utilized in the multi-band portion of this project include: colour and histogram image enhancement normalization and image algebra enhancement filtering image enhancement band transformations (eigen pictures) image enhancement coventional methods of enhancementMethods of classification utilized in this project include: signature training ( sampling) supervised classification, PPD, Mindis, Maximumlikliehood unsupervised classification, histogram equalization, clusteringMethods of enhancement used in uni-scene portion of this project include: histogram equalization uni-band filtering image enhancement Data AcqisitionData acquisition refers to the data by means of information gathering about the scale selection of the remote sensing formats and the target identification of the surveyed and mapped resources. In this analysis we have acquired Landsat Thematic Mapper data which consists of seven spectral bands and covers a 512512 picture element area. The Landsat ground resolution or pixel size is 3030 metres which translates to an area coverage of 235.93 square kilometres of ground coverage, which is a subset region of the Yellowstone National Park. The Nile Delta region is located in nothern Egypt and the data acquired was originally acquired for delta topgraphy. The data is Landsat MSS with one available band and covers a 580640 picture element area. The Landsat MSS ground resolution is 8080 metres which translates to an area coverage 2211.84 square kilometres of ground coverage. In addition to the above mentioned sources of data, a supplimental map has been attached with the defined study area. Data ProcessingRefers to the process whereby one observes, classifies. and analysis specific targets or features found on the imagery and defines and explains the importance of those results. Data Application/UtilizationThe surveying and mapping of either environmental, physical, or human resources from aerial photographs or satellite imagery. The main purpose of data application is to make an inventory, monitor, and make proper resource management plans for the future. ConclusionA comparison of the conventional (single band) and unconventional (multi-band) enhancement and classification is necessary to complete this analysis of image enhancement and image classification in digital image analysis. It is quite obvious that the multi-band data set was more useful and flexible when it came to classification and enhancement. Many methods of enhancement were applied to the multi-band data and there were a lot of methods to chose from, depending on the type of features that were to be highlighted. That is not to say that the conventional methods of classification and enhancement are obsolete. It only means you must chose the best methods of enhancement to highlight a particular area in which you are interested.

Philosophy Essays - Epistemology, Philosophical Methodology

Philosophy March 7, 1999 Descartes' Extreme Philosophy The philosopher/scientist/mathematician Rene Descartes lived in a time of sweeping changes across all realms of knowledge. Descartes himself was responsible for many of these changes, one of which was a strong advancement in philosophy. Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy tackle, among many things, two difficult philosophical issues. The method in which these issues are dealt with, however, tends to be on the extreme side, since Descartes is determined to build upon ideas that are indubitable. Descartes' meditations give a great deal to the field of philosophy, but they could have been composed in a more understandable way for people. Rene Descartes lived in an era of both extreme skepticism and scientific advancement. This era, the Scientific Revolution, occurred between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. During this era, strong advancements were made in seemingly every area of scholarly knowledge. One important element that arose during these times was skepticism, the denial of anything that could reasonably be denied. Skeptics existed to exploit any mistake made by scientists and scholars, as every idea and piece of knowledge would be subject to attack unless it was indisputable. So, if someone wanted to make a contribution to a scholarly field, they needed to make sure it would survive under scrutiny of the skeptics. Descartes was himself a man full of contributions to the world of knowledge, and luckily enough a bit of a skeptic. Only by being able to think like a skeptic was Descartes able compose his meditations with so few weak points. Descartes' Meditations were written in extreme defense against all types of skepticism. The only weak points Descartes left in his Meditations were those which he based upon religion. Religious skepticism was a particularly large obstacle to his philosophy, since the easiest way to support all of his knowledge was to affirm the existence of an all-loving God. Descartes had three separate proofs- causal, ontological, and design- for the existence of God that could be a foundation for the rest of his philosophy. However, he knew that some skeptics would deny the existence of God no matter what, so there needed to be some foundation that did not rely on faith. This foundation was the statement "I am, I exist", which according to Descartes must necessarily be true every time he utters it. Descartes proves all this and leaves nothing vulnerable to the skeptics, but his methods are quite extreme. Perhaps Descartes could have defeated his skeptics by proving his philosophical goal in a slig htly different manner. Descartes' main two philosophical goals in the Mediations were to prove the existence of God and to demonstrate the distinction of the soul from the body. To prove these two points, Descartes writes six separate meditations which delve deep into the philosophical recesses of his mind. The task of proving the existence of God seems easier for Descartes than proving that the body and soul exist separately. Once he proves that there is a God, however, he is able to prove the existence of the body and the soul. Descartes begins his meditations by denying everything he knows unless it is absolutely certain. Once one certain idea is found, only then may he proceed to rebuild upon that everything he knows. Arriving at his two goals this way will leave absolutely no doubt in his mind or those of his skeptics. Although the Meditations are built to withstand criticism, the work as a whole is not as strong as it could be. Descartes goes to such great extremes to prove his points and develop his arguments that they seem at times silly. Some of his assumptions are made in confusing circumstantial situations and are therefore borderline on the absurd. The idea of reality existing in various degrees is incomprehensible to most people, even the scholars of that era. At other times Descartes is talking about weird looking animals and the fact that he really is a gourd. Times like these make his philosophy very extreme and almost incredible to people who do not fully understand Descartes' methods. Descartes' philosophy would be much more credible if the goals were met without having to go to such extremes. The separate existence of the body and the soul

Why a Career in Logistics Might Be Right for You

Why a Career in Logistics Might Be Right for You Doctor. Lawyer. Accountant. Teacher. These are a few of the professions which may first come to mind when contemplating potential career paths. However, there are plenty of other lesser known options with equal or greater potential for everything from compensation to job satisfaction. At the top of that list? Logistics. Let’s take a closer look at this quickly growing field, along with why a career in logistics may be right for you. What is Logistics?According to Logistics World, â€Å"Logistics means having the right thing, at the right place, at the right time.† While this definition may be a simplification, it encapsulates the field of logistics in its most basic sense. In the business sense, logistics applies to the supply chain of goods and services between the point of origin and the point of consumption. The ultimate goal of workers in this field? To meet customer needs in the most efficient, effective way.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, â€Å"logis ticians analyze and coordinate an organization’s supply chain – the system that moves a product from supplier to consumer.† This comprises the entire life cycle of a product - including everything from developing business relationships with suppliers to directing the allocation of materials to comprehending customer needs. Ultimately, logisticians seek to minimize cost, time and risk when it comes to safely moving goods from one point to another.Beyond LogisticiansNot all people who work in logistics are logisticians, however. The field also has jobs for people across a wide range of academic backgrounds and experiences - from truck drivers and forklift operators to upper level logistics executives.Because of the variety of opportunities, there is also significant opportunity for career advancement for hardworking individuals. In fact, many logistics company prefer to train and promote from within rather than pursuing external hires.If you aspire toward a caree r in international business, meanwhile, logistics is a great starting point. Many workers in this field use entry-level skills and experience to transition to mid- and upper-level positions in other countries.The Many Benefits of a Career in LogisticsJob opportunities for logisticians are projected to grow by a whopping 22 percent between 2012 and 2022. This is significantly faster than the average rate for all other occupations. With this growth comes job security, along with the possibility of increased compensation due to the in demand status of professionals in this field. While the median annual wage for logisticians is $72,780, top earners can make upwards of $112,000.Why is logistics expanding so quickly? The field’s exponential growth largely relates to the expansion of the global economy. As geographic borders continue to break down, new opportunities are constantly developing. Logisticians will assume responsibility for exploring these opportunities, pushing current boundaries, and conquering the rising challenges along the way.No matter where you live, a career in logistics is within your reach. Nearly every company that offers a product or service requires people to handle logistics. While some areas, such as Chicago and Los Angeles, are logistics activity hubs, every industrialized region of the world has companies in need of logistics experts.If you’re looking for career fulfillment, logistics offers the potential of great satisfaction. The work is constantly changing, and logistics environments - from the warehouse to the boardroom - bustle with activity and innovation. This fast-paced work ensure that you’ll never be bored.There’s a reason why logisticians earned the sixth spot on U.S. News and World Report’s list of â€Å"Best Business Jobs.† If you like to solve problems, work collaboratively with others, and value not only job security, but also the promise of quick career advancement, a career in logistics can help you realize these goals while also enjoying rare professional fulfillment.

Constitutional advance in kuwait Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Constitutional advance in kuwait - Essay Example The history of Kuwait shows that Kuwaiti people have always been subject to the influence of Shaikh-based leadership. On the same note, critical constitutional movements are evident in the country’s past and present history. Organized groups lobbying for constitutional leadership have put the Amir on the spot for the longest time. With the new constitution, however, the country’s history of diverse and dynamic movements will come to a beneficial end. Most importantly, the new constitution will strike a balance between Shaikhly leadership, merchant interests, and the general welfare of the Kuwaiti people. The road to the new constitution was not easy. There were enormous challenges and barriers that often emerged to block constitutional developments in the country. The most critical challenge relates to the influence of Sabah family. This family supported a system in which the Executive is more powerful than Legislature. Executive power and authority that outweighed the Legislature, however, was not welcome. The Constituent Assembly foiled Sabah family’s attempts to strengthen the Executive at the expense of the Legislature. Most importantly, there were three primary contentious issues as far as approving the new constitution was concerned. The Constituent Assembly debated three constitutional articles that had put the entire endeavor at stake. Article 2 elicited mixed reactions following a proposal to amend its provisions. The proposal was to amend the article and declare Sharia Law the primary legislation source. Such an amendment would have made Islamic Sacred Law the main source of legislation. However, this call for amendment was not adopted. Article 131 was brought to the attention of the house. The article prohibits ministers serving in Kuwait from engaging in income-generating business, professional, or financial activities. This merchant-driven interest,