AUDITING AND ASSURANCE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

AUDITING AND ASSURANCE - Essay Example Legislation and the Auditing Profession in the UK According to the True and Fair Organisation (2012), the audit profession in the UK is monitored closely, and regulated tightly in accordance with strict professional standards and legislation. Also, companies and individuals who breach any of the rules, outlined by Legislation, will face strict penalties. The audit profession is under the Legislation provisions of the UK Government. The government controls the audit profession through Legislation such as the Companies Act on Audit, Inspection and Community Enterprise of 2004 and 2006 (True and Fair Organisation, 2012). There are also the Auditors Regulations of 2007, which control the activities of the Audit profession in the UK. This Legislation controls and monitors how audits are carried out in the UK. Legislation regulates the auditing profession in the UK, under the Companies Act 2006 (Collings, 2013, p. 237). Therefore, it is a requirement that professional accountants should at tain a senior statutory auditor position for them to be able to practice audit-related work in the UK. Further, UK Legislation requires that companies must have their annual financial statements audited. Auditors are required by Law to follow ISA (UK and Ireland) 700 in the formation of an auditor’s report on financial statements, as issued by the Financial Reporting Council. Common Law versus Auditing Profession in the UK The UK court system has taken responsibility of safeguarding shareholders, who are termed as third parties, from fraudulent activities of company directors, in collaboration with auditors and audit firms. Therefore, it acts as a quality-control mechanism for the auditing profession (Johnstone, Gramling, & Rittenberg, 2013, p.14). Common Law requires that auditors should observe care of professional advice to avoid violating the provisions of the civil law of negligence (Davies, 2011, p. 7). Auditors should also observe their duty of care diligently, while p erforming audit work because the UK Legal System is based on Common Law (Davies, 2011, p. 7). Company directors have the responsibility of preparing financial statements that should present a true and fair value of the organisation. Therefore, they contribute to the outcome of audit processes in one way or the other. The public may sue auditors and auditing firms under state statutes and Common Law for substandard audit work (Johnstone, Gramling, & Rittenberg, 2013, p. 14). The public, in this case, comprises of shareholders and other investors who may rely on the information provided by company directors and auditors to make financial decisions. In some circumstances, according to Common Law, disclosure may be justified in the public interest where there is no instance of noncompliance with Law regulations. For instance, where the public is being misled or the public’s interests are being damaged by auditors’ activities (FRC, 2013, p. 17). Therefore, Common Law contro ls the audit profession in the UK in that, it requires auditors to comply with the provisions of Common Law. Auditors and audit firms, who violate Common Law provisions, can be sued under Common Law by third parties. Regulatory and Professional Elements versus Auditing Profession in the UK Various independent Regulatory and Professional bodies have been created to control the auditing profession in the UK. The Regulatory and Pr

The Boundary Of The Boundless Of Anaximander Philosophy Essay

The Boundary Of The Boundless Of Anaximander Philosophy Essay This study tells about Anaximanders theory of Apeiron and as well as his life and his philosophical background. Anaximander is said to be a younger contemporary of Thales, who also sought for the first material principle; he was a disciple and successor of Thales and philosophized in dialogue with him. He was not mentioned until the time of Aristotle. Unlike Thales, Anaximander wrote a philosophical work, entitled  On Nature; unfortunately, neither this nor any of his other works has survived. The information about his philosophy came from summaries of it by other writers, especially Aristotle and Theophrastus. Anaximander was said to have drawn the first map of the inhabited world on a tablet, which was a marvel in his day (Agathemerus  I, 1) Statement of the Problem Anaximanders theory of Apeiron, a Greek word which literarily means boundless, indeterminate, unlimited, infinite, or indefinite is an unintelligible idea about the origin of all things. It gave confusion with his Arche which means beginning, or origin. He explains how the  four elements  of ancient physics (air,  earth,  water  and  fire) are formed, and how Earth and terrestrial beings are formed through their interactions. However, unlike other Pre-Socratics, he never defines this principle precisely, and it has generally been understood (e.g., by Aristotle and by  Saint Augustine) as a sort of primal  chaos. The researcher has his own rule on doing this research. The studies came from the book and through internet. The researchers use a descriptive type of research. This research is for educational purposes and serves as a requirement in on the researchers study. All of the information that has gathered in the entire sources is a big help in answering the research. All of the information that was gathered will serve as knowledge to us and for the readers. This study will be beneficial to the students and instructors. This researchs goal is designed to help students improve academic competency. The output of this study is a source material that the teachers can assimilate and disseminate by diffusion and induction technique. The proposed study serves the students as their reference or guide in creating their research. It will also help students taking help in making their research studies about their topics. For the teachers, this study will help them to have a deeper understanding of the said research. By this study they will come up with easier and powerful research. To the researchers, the proposed study will benefit and help the future researcher as their guide. The study can also open in development of this study.   Background of the Study Anaximanders Biography Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was born in  Miletus  during the third year of the 42nd  Olympiad  (610 BC).  According to  Apollodorus of Athens, Greek grammarian of the 2nd century BC, he was sixty-four years old during the second year of the 58th Olympiad (547-546  BC), and died shortly afterwards. Establishing a timeline of his work is now impossible, since no document provides chronological references.  Themistius, a 4th-century  Byzantine  rhetorician, mentions that he was the first of the known Greeks to publish a written document on nature. Therefore his texts would be amongst the earliest written in  prose, at least in the Western world. By the time of  Plato, his philosophy was almost forgotten, and Aristotle, his successor  Theophrastus  and a few  doxographers  provide us with the little information that remains. However, we know from Aristotle that Thales, also from Miletus, precedes Anaximander. It is debatable whether Thales actually was the teacher of Anaximander, but there is no doubt that Anaximander was influenced by Thales theory that everything is derived from water. One thing that is not debatable is that even the ancient Greeks considered Anaximander to be from the Monist school which began in Miletus with Thales followed by Anaximander and finished with  Anaximenes  3rd-centuryRoman  rhetorician  Aelian  depicts him as leader of the Milesian colony to  Apollonia  on the  Black Sea  coast, and hence some have inferred that he was a prominent citizen. Indeed,  Various History  (III, 17) explains that philosophers sometimes also dealt with political matters. It is very likely that leaders of Miletus sent him there as a legislator to create a constitution or simply to maintain the colonys allegiance. Philosophical View The Apeiron Anaximander shares Thales assumption that all things originate from one original element and ultimately are that element; to use Aristotles terminology, he holds that there is a first (material) principle (arche) of all things. Unlike Thales, however, Anaximander asserts that the first principle is not water but what he calls theapeiron, translated as the indeterminate or limitless. Simplicius , drawing upon theophrastus work, gives following account of anaximanders. Anaximander named the arche and element of existing things the apeiron, being the first to introduce this name for the arche. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a different substance that is limitless or indeterminate, from which there come into being all the heavens and the worlds within them. Harmony of the Opposites Dependent upon Theophrastus, Simplicius says according to Anaximander, things perish into those things out of which they have their being, according to necessity; for they make just recompense to one another for their injustice according to the ordinance or assessment of time. The Aperion as Unconditioned and God We cannot say that the apeiron has no effect, and the only effectiveness which we can ascribe to it is that of a principle. Everything is either a source or derived from a source. But there cannot be a source of the apeiron, for that would be a limit of it. Further, as it is a Beginning, it is both uncreatable and indestructible. For there must be a point at which what has come to be reaches completion and also a termination of all passing away. That is why, as we say there is no principle of this, but it is this which is held to be the principle of other things, and to encompass all and to steer all; as those assert who do not recognize, alongside the infinite, other causes such as mind or friendship. Theories Anaximanders theories were influenced by the  Greek mythical  tradition, and by some ideas of  Thales   the father of philosophy   as well as by observations made by older civilizations in the East (especially by the Babylonian astrologists). All these were elaborated rationally. In his desire to find some universal principle, he assumed like traditional religion the existence of a cosmic order and in elaborating his ideas on this he used the old mythical language which ascribed divine control to various spheres of reality. This was a common practice for the Greek philosophers in a society which saw gods everywhere; therefore they could fit their ideas into a tolerably elastic system. Apeiron For Anaximander, the  principle  of things, the constituent of all substances, is nothing determined and not an element such as water in Thales view. Neither is it something halfway between air and water, or between air and fire, thicker than air and fire, or more subtle than water and earth.  Anaximander argues that water cannot embrace all of the opposites found in nature for example, water can only be wet, never dry and therefore cannot be the one primary substance; nor could any of the other candidates. He postulated the  apeiron  as a substance that, although not directly perceptible to us, could explain the opposites he saw around him. Anaximander maintains that all dying things are returning to the element from which they came (apeiron).   Cosmology Anaximanders bold use of non-mythological  explanatory hypotheses considerably distinguishes him from previous cosmology writers such as  Hesiod. It confirms that pre-Socratic philosophers were making an early effort to demythify physical processes. His major contribution to history was writing the oldest prose document about the  Universe  and the origins of  life; for this he is often called the Father of Cosmology and founder of astronomy. However,  pseudo-Plutarch  states that he still viewed celestial bodies as deities. Anaximander was the first to conceive a  mechanical  model of the  world. In his model, the  Earth  floats very still in the centre of the infinite, not supported by anything. It remains in the same place because of its indifference, a point of view that Aristotle considered ingenious, but false, in  On the Heavens.  Its curious shape is that of a  cylinder  with a height one-third of its diameter. The flat top forms the inhabited world, which is surrounded by a circular oceanic mass. Such a model allowed the concept that  celestial bodies  could pass under it. It goes further than Thales claim of a world floating on water, for which Thales faced the problem of explaining what would contain this ocean, while Anaximander solved it by introducing his concept of infinite (apeiron). Multiple Worlds According to Simplicius, Anaximander already speculated on the plurality of  worlds, similar to  atomists  Leucippus  and  Democritus, and later philosopher  Epicurus. These thinkers supposed that worlds appeared and disappeared for a while, and that some were born when others perished. They claimed that this movement was eternal, for without movement, there can be no generation, no destruction. In addition to Simplicius, Hippolytus  reports Anaximanders claim that from the infinite comes the principle of beings, which themselves come from the heavens and the worlds (several doxographers use the plural when this philosopher is referring to the worlds within,  which are often infinite in quantity).  Cicero  writes that he attributes different gods to the countless worlds. This theory places Anaximander close to the Atomists and the  Epicureans  who, more than a century later, also claimed that an infinity of worlds appeared and disappeared. In the  timeline of the Greek history of thought, some thinkers conceptualized a single world (Plato, Aristotle,  Anaxagoras  and  Archelaus), while others instead speculated on the existence of a series of worlds, continuous or non-continuous (Anaximenes, Heraclitus,  Empedocles  and  Diogenes).   Meteorological phenomena Anaximander attributed some phenomena, such as  thunder  and  lightning, to the intervention of elements, rather than to divine causes. In his system, thunder results from the shock of clouds hitting each other; the loudness of the sound is proportionate with that of the shock. Thunder without lightning is the result of the wind being too weak to emit any flame, but strong enough to produce a sound. A flash of lightning without thunder is a jolt of the air that disperses and falls, allowing a less active fire to break free. Thunderbolts are the result of a thicker and more violent air flow. He saw the sea as a remnant of the mass of humidity that once surrounded Earth.  A part of that mass evaporated under the suns action, thus causing the winds and even the rotation of the celestial bodies, which he believed were attracted to places where water is more abundant.  He explained rain as a product of the humidity pumped up from Earth by the sun.  For him, the Earth was slowly drying up and water only remained in the deepest regions, which someday would go dry as well. According to Aristotles  Meteorology  (II, 3), Democritus also shared this opinion. Origin of humankind Anaximander speculated about the beginnings and  origin  of animal life. Taking into account the existence of fossils, he claimed that animals sprang out of the sea long ago. The first animals were born trapped in a spiny bark, but as they got older, the bark would dry up and break. Anaximander put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of big fish to protect themselves from the Earths climate until they could come out in open air and lose their scales. He thought that, considering humans extended infancy, we could not have survived in the primeval world in the same manner we do presently. Other Accomplishments Cartography Maps were produced in ancient times, also notably in  Egypt,  Lydia, the  Middle East, and  Babylon. Only some small examples survived until today. The unique example of a world map comes from late Babylonian tablet BM 92687 later than 9th century BCE but is based probably on a much older map. These maps indicated directions, roads, towns, borders, and geological features. Anaximanders innovation was to represent the entire inhabited land known to the ancient Greeks. Such an accomplishment is more significant than it at first appears. Anaximander most likely drew this map for three reasons.  First, it could be used to improve navigation and trade between  Miletuss colonies and other colonies around the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea. Second,  Thales  would probably have found it easier to convince the Ionian  city-states  to join in a federation in order to push the Median  threat away if he possessed such a tool. Finally, the philosophical idea of a global representation of the world simply for the sake of knowledge was reason enough to design one. Gnomon The  Suda  relates that Anaximander explained some basic notions of geometry. It also mentions his interest in the measurement of time and associates him with the introduction in  Greece  of the gnomon. In Lacedaemon, he participated in the construction, or at least in the adjustment, of  sundials  to indicate  solstices  and  equinoxes. Indeed, a gnomon required adjustments from a place to another because of the difference in latitude. In his time, the gnomon was simply a vertical pillar or rod mounted on a horizontal plane. The position of its shadow on the plane indicated the time of day. As it moves through its apparent course, the sun draws a curve with the tip of the projected shadow, which is shortest at noon, when pointing due south. The variation in the tips position at noon indicates the solar time and the seasons; the shadow is longest on the winter solstice and shortest on the summer solstice. However, the invention of the gnomon itself cannot be attributed to Anaximander because its use, as well as the division of days into twelve parts, came from the  Babylonians. It is they, according toHerodotus  Histories  (II, 109), who gave the Greeks the art of time measurement. It is likely that he was not the first to determine the solstices, because no calculation is necessary. On the other hand, equinoxes do not correspond to the middle point between the positions during solstices, as the Babylonians thought. As the  Suda  seems to suggest, it is very likely that with his knowledge of geometry, he became the first Greek to accurately determine the equinoxes. Prediction of an earthquake In his philosophical work  De Divinatione  (I, 50, 112), Cicero states that Anaximander convinced the inhabitants of  Lacedaemon  to abandon their city and spend the night in the country with their weapons because an earthquake was near.  The city collapsed when the top of the  Taygetus  split like the stern of a ship. Pliny the Elder also mentions this anecdote (II, 81), suggesting that it came from an admirable inspiration, as opposed to Cicero, who did not associate the prediction with divination. Philosophy Contributions Cosmology the production of the opposite and their separating off are important in his cosmology penalty and retribution of the opposites in accord to the assessment of time. The earth is cylindrical in shape and its depth is 1/3 its breath. It is immobile (the earth does not rest on water ) in the center of the universe by way of its equilibrium. The earth may someday become dry. Concerning the formation of the heavenly bodies: the sun is equal to the earth. The circles and spheres carry the heavenly bodies. An eclipse occur when the aperture of the sun or moon are blocked. Concerning meteorological phenomena: the winds thunder and lightning all these have to do with winds. Zoogamy the 1st living creatures were born in moisture and enclosed in thorny barks. As their age grows they came forth into the drier part and the bark was broken off. Anthropology- Anaximander held the theory of evolution of animals. Man was born from animals of another species (man come into being inside fishes). Conclusion Anaximander was indeed one of the greatest minds that ever lived. By speculating and arguing about the Boundless he was the first metaphysician. By drawing a map of the world he was the first geographer, by boldly speculating about the universe he broke with the ancient image of the celestial vault and became the discoverer of the Western world-picture. The Boundless has no origin. For then it would have a limit. Aristotle once said there is no beginning of the infinite, or in that case it would have an end. But without beginning and indestructible, as being, a sort of first principle is necessary for whatever comes into existence should have and end and there is a conclusion of all destruction. But there is no principle of this Apeiron (www.egs.edu/library/anaximander/qoutes) and Anaximander himself affirm that that all dying things are returning to the element which they came which is the apeiron. The fact that things dies, decays, or wither states its limit, therefore it is limite d, finite, and is bounded by the natural law. We find his theory of Apeiron unbelievable especially when it is first; a theory and has no proof, second; a paradox itself in a way that he viewed the world as tangled in a neatly bounded category. Its hard to believe on what someone has said when that someone, itself, defies what he have stated and thus formed a seemingly contradictory paradox that leads to confusion.

Discrimination toward the Black People in Ernest J Gaines :: social issues

Discrimination toward the Black People in Ernest J Gaines CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Charles Johnson states that actually there had been no â€Å"Black problem† until the Civil War. It is because before the Blacks had only been chattels. The War happened because the Blacks want their freedom in education, employment, the vote, regularized marriage and even the acquisition of a surname (Butcher: 243). The Congress in 1875 adopted a statue which allowed the equality of facilities and accommodation for every race and color, but the famous Plessy-Ferguson Decision in 1896 gave legal discrimination and segregation by virtue of its â€Å"separate but equal† doctrine. This doctrine arouse the discrimination and segregation toward the Black people (Gordon: 108) The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman which is written by Ernest J Gaines consists the life of Blacks in America who are discriminated by the White Americans. This issue inside Gaines’ novel attracts me to analyze the topic of discrimination toward the Blacks in America. The analysis applies interdisciplinary approach to find the aspect of social, history and morality inside the novel discussed. The method of research of this paper uses the library research. The primary source of this paper is Ernest J Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the second sources are the information which is taken from the library books and the Internet. CHAPTER II THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE This chapter discusses about the discrimination toward the Black people in America which is reflected by Gaines in his novel. Gaines tells about the discrimination which is experienced by Jane Pittman and her race. Jane Pitman has been lived for one hundred and ten years. Therefore, through his novel, Gaines explains about Pittman’s live from her childhood until her old age which happens during the civil war up to the civil right movement < E:Teen Voices Volume 3 Book Review The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.htm> The civil war that happened in America did not end both the slavery and the discrimination toward the Black Americans. The discrimination toward them is still continued in which it causes the Civil Right Movement. The first prove about the discrimination toward the Blacks is the slave names which are given to the Blacks. It means that the slaves are given the names which are different from the White’s names. They are for example Ticey, Buck and Big Laura The names are given by their masters (Gaines:17). Any slaves who are dares to owe the names like the White’s names will be punished by their masters.

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’

Achebe, Chinua. â€Å"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's ‘Heart of Darkness'† Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text, background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W. W Norton and Co. , 1988, pp. 251-261 In the fall of 1974 I was walking one day from the English Department at the University of Massachusetts to a parking lot. It was a fine autumn morning such as encouraged friendliness to passing strangers. Brisk youngsters were hurrying in all directions, many of them obviously freshmen in their first flush of enthusiasm.An older man going the same way as I turned and remarked to me how very young they came these days. I agreed. Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he knew a fellow who taught the same thing, or perhaps it was African history, in a certain Community College not far from her e. It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster. Oh well,† I heard him say finally, behind me: â€Å"I guess I have to take your course to find out. † A few weeks later I received two very touching letters from high school children in Yonkers, New York, who — bless their teacher — had just read Things Fall Apart . One of them was particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe. I propose to draw from these rather trivial encounters rather heavy conclusions which at first sight might seem somewhat out of proportion to them. But only, I hope, at first sight.The young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on account of his age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions and, li ke everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things. The other person being fully my own age could not be excused on the grounds of his years. Ignorance might be a more likely reason; but here again I believe that something more willful than a mere lack of information was at work.For did not that erudite British historian and Regius Professor at Oxford, Hugh Trevor Roper, also pronounce that African history did not exist? If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire — one might indeed say the need — in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.This need is not new; which should relieve us all of considerable responsibility and perhaps make us even willing to l ook at this phenomenon dispassionately. I have neither the wish nor the competence to embark on the exercise with the tools of the social and biological sciences but more simply in the manner of a novelist responding to one famous book of European fiction: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , which better than any other work that I know displays that Western desire and need which I have just referred to.Of course there are whole libraries of books devoted to the same purpose but most of them are so obvious and so crude that few people worry about them today. Conrad, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller into the bargain. His contribution therefore falls automatically into a different class — permanent literature — read and taught and constantly evaluated by serious academics. Heart of Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar has numbered it â€Å"among the half-dozen greatest short n ovels in the English language. I will return to this critical opinion in due course because it may seriously modify my earlier suppositions about who may or may not be guilty in some of the matters I will now raise. Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as â€Å"the other world,† the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting, peacefully â€Å"at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks. But the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that â€Å"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. † Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very di fferent, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry. For the Thames too â€Å"has been one of the dark places of the earth. It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative, the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings. These suggestive echoes comprise Conrad's famed evocation of the African atmosphere in Heart of Darkness . In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy.We can inspect samples of this on pages 36 and 37 of the present edition: a) it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and b) The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc. , etc. The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago to Conrad's â€Å"adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery. That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such under-hand activity.But Conrad chose his subject w ell — one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths. The most interesting and revealing passages in Heart of Darkness are, however, about people. I must crave the indulgence of my reader to quote almost a whole page from about the middle of the stop/when representatives of Europe in a steamer going down the Congo encounter the denizens of Africa. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly as we struggled round a bend there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us — who could tell?We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories. The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were †¦. No they were not inhuman.Well, you know that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They ho wled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend.Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: â€Å"What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours †¦. Ugly. † Having shown us Africa in the mass, Conrad then zeros in, half a page later, on a specific example, giving us one of his rare descriptions of an African who is not just limbs or rolling eyes: And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler.He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity — and he had filed his teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge.As everybody knows, Conrad is a romantic on the side. He might not exactly admire savages clapping their hands and stamping their feet but they have at least the merit of being in their place, unlike this dog in a parody of breeches. For Conrad things being in their place is of the utmost importance. â€Å"Fine fellows — cannibals –in their place,† he tells us pointedly. Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place, like Europe leaving its safe stronghold between the policeman and the baker to like a peep into the heart of darkness.Before the story likes us into the Congo basin proper we are given this nice little vignette as an example of things in their place: Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks — these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement that was as natural and hue as the surf along their coast.They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. Towards the end of the story Conrad lavishes a whole page quite unexpectedly on a n African woman who has obviously been some kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz and now presides (if I may be permitted a little liberty) like a formidable mystery over the inexorable imminence of his departure: She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent †¦. She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.This Amazon is drawn in considerable detail, albeit of a predictable nature, for two reasons. First, she is in her place and so can win Conrad's special brand of approval and second, she fulfills a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined, European woman who will step forth to end the story: She came forward all in black with a pale head, floating toward me in the dusk. She was in mourning †¦. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, â€Å"I had heard you were coming. â€Å"†¦ She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.The differ ence in the attitude of the novelist to these two women is conveyed in too many direct and subfile ways to need elaboration. But perhaps the most significant difference is the one implied in the author's bestowal of human expression to the one and the withholding of it from the other. It is clearly not part of Conrad's purpose to confer language on the â€Å"rudimentary souls† of Africa. In place of speech they made â€Å"a violent babble of uncouth sounds. † They â€Å"exchanged short grunting phrases† even among themselves. But most of the time they were too busy with their frenzy.There are two occasions in the book, however, when Conrad departs somewhat from his practice and confers speech, even English speech, on the savages. The first occurs when cannibalism gets the better of them: â€Å"Catch ‘im,† he snapped with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth — â€Å"catch ‘im. Give ‘im to us. † â€Å" To you, eh? † I asked; â€Å"what would you do with them? â€Å"Eat ‘im! † he said curtly. . . . The other occasion was the famous announcement:†Mistah Kurtz — he dead. † At first sight these instances might be mistaken for unexpected acts of generosity from Conrad.In reality they constitute some of his best assaults. In the case of the cannibals the incomprehensible grunts that had thus far served them for speech suddenly proved inadequate for Conrad's purpose of letting the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts. Weighing the necessity for consistency in the portrayal of the dumb brutes against the sensational advantages of securing their conviction by clear, unambiguous evidence issuing out of their own mouth Conrad chose the latter. As for the announcement of Mr.Kurtz's death by the â€Å"insolent black head in the doorway† what better or more appropriate finis could be written to the horror story of that wayward ch ild of civilization who willfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and â€Å"taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land† than the proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined? It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism.Certainly Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person. But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters.It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad's complete confidence — a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their two careers. Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or wherever.Thus Marlow is able to toss out such bleeding-heart sentiments as these: They were dying slowly — it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts , lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age in England, Europe and America. It took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people. That extraordinary missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to Africans in much the same area as Conrad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence. In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: â€Å"The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother. And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being. Naturally he bec ame a sensation in Europe and America. Pilgrims flocked, and I believe still flock even after he has passed on, to witness the prodigious miracle in Lamberene, on the edge of the primeval forest. Conrad's liberalism would not take him quite as far as Schweitzer's, though. He would not use the word brother however qualified; the farthest he would go was kinship.When Marlow's African helmsman falls down with a spear in his heart he gives his white master one final disquieting look. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory — like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. It is important to note that Conrad, careful as ever with his words, is concerned not so much about distant kinship as about someone laying a claim on it. The black man lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates Conrad, â€Å"†¦ he thought of their humanity — like yours †¦. Ugly. † The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked. Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness.They will point out to you that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the story than he is to the natives, that the point of the story is to ridicule Europe's civilizing mission in Africa. A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human fa ctor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril.Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. I do not doubt Conrad's great talents.Even Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments: The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across tile water to bar the way for our return. Its exploration of the minds of the European characters is often penetrating and full of insight. But all that ha s been more than fully discussed in the last fifty years. His obvious racism has, however, not been addressed. And it is high time it was! Conrad was born in 1857, the very year in which the first Anglican missionaries were arriving among my own people in Nigeria.It was certainly not his fault that he lived his life at a time when the reputation of the black man was at a particularly low level. But even after due allowances have been made for all the influences of contemporary prejudice on his sensibility there remains still in Conrad's attitude a residue of antipathy to black people which his peculiar psychology alone can explain. His own account of his first encounter with a black man is very revealing: A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days.Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards. Certainly Conrad had a problem with niggers. His inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts. Sometimes his fixation on blackness is equally interesting as when he gives us this brief description: A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms. . . . as though we might expect a black figure striding along on black legs to wave white arms! But so unrelenting is Conrad's obsession. As a matter of interest Conrad gives us in A Personal Record what amounts to a companion piece to the buck nigger of Haiti.At the age of sixteen Conrad encountered his first Englishman in Europe. He calls him â€Å"my unforgettable Englishman† and describes him in the following manner: â€Å"(his) calves exposed to the public gaze . . . dazzled the beholder by the splendor of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory. . . . The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men. . . illumined his face. . . and triumphant eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly curios ity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth. . . his white calves twinkled sturdily. Irrational love and irrational hate jostling together in the heart of that talented, tormented man. But whereas irrational love may at worst engender foolish acts of indiscretion, irrational hate can endanger the life of the community. Naturally Conrad is a dream for psychoanalytic critics. Perhaps the most detailed study of him in this direction is by Bernard C. Meyer, M. D. In his lengthy book Dr. Meyer follows every conceivable lead (and sometimes inconceivable ones) to explain Conrad. As an example he gives us long disquisitions on the significance of hair and hair-cutting in Conrad.And yet not even one word is spared for his attitude to black people. Not even the discussion of Conrad's antisemitism was enough to spark off in Dr. Meyer's mind those other dark and explosive thoughts. Which only leads one to surmise that Western psychoanalysts must regard the kind of racism displayed by Co nrad absolutely normal despite the profoundly important work done by Frantz Fanon in the psychiatric hospitals of French Algeria. Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately his heart of darkness plagues us still.Which is why an offensive and deplorable book can be described by a serious scholar as â€Å"among the half dozen greatest short novels in the English language. † And why it is today the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses in English Departments of American universities. There are two probable grounds on which what I have aid so far may be contested. The first is that it is no concern of fiction to please people about whom it is written. I will go along with that. But I am not talking about pleasing people.I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past a nd continues to do so in many ways and many places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question. Secondly, I may be challenged on the grounds of actuality. Conrad, after all, did sail down the Congo in 1890 when my own father was still a babe in arms. How could I stand up more than fifty years after his death and purport to contradict him?My answer is that as a sensible man I will not accept just any traveler's tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not trust the evidence even off man's very eyes when I suspect them to be as jaundiced as Conrad's. And we also happen to know that Conrad was, in the words of his biographer, Bernard C. Meyer, â€Å"notoriously inaccurate in the rendering of his own history. † But more important by far is the abundant testimony about Conrad's savages which we could gather if we were so inclined from other sources and which might lead us to think that these people must have had other occupations besides erging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow and his dispirited band. For as it happened, soon after Conrad had written his book an event of far greater consequence was taking place in the art world of Europe. This is how Frank Willett, a British art historian, describes it: Gaugin had gone to Tahiti, the most extravagant individual act of turning to a non-European culture in the decades immediately before and after 1900, when European artists were avid for new artistic experiences, but it was only about 1904-5 that African art began to make its distinctive impact.One piece is still identifiable; it is a mask that had been given to Maurice Vlaminck in 1905. He records that Derain was ‘speechless' and ‘stunned' when he saw it, bought it from Vlaminck and in turn showed it to Picasso and Matisse, who were also greatly affected by it. Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and had it cast in bronze. . . The revolution of twentieth century art was under way! The mask in question was made by other savages living just north of Conrad's River Congo. They have a name too: the Fang people, and are without a doubt among the world's greatest masters of the sculptured form.The event Frank Willett is referring to marks the beginning of cubism and the infusion of new life into European art, which had run completely out of strength. The point of all this is to suggest that Conrad's picture of the people of the Congo seems grossly inadequate even at the height of their subjection to the ravages of King Leopold's lnternational Association for the Civilization of Central Africa. Travelers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves. But even those not blinkered, like Conrad with xenophobia, can be astonishing blind.Let me digress a little here. One of the greatest and most intrepid travelers of all time, Marco Polo, journeyed to the Far East from the Mediterranean in the thi rteenth century and spent twenty years in the court of Kublai Khan in China. On his return to Venice he set down in his book entitled Description of the World his impressions of the peoples and places and customs he had seen. But there were at least two extraordinary omissions in his account. He said nothing about the art of printing, unknown as yet in Europe but in full flower in China.He either did not notice it at all or if he did, failed to see what use Europe could possibly have for it. Whatever the reason, Europe had to wait another hundred years for Gutenberg. But even more spectacular was Marco Polo's omission of any reference to the Great Wall of China nearly 4,000 miles long and already more than 1,000 years old at the time of his visit. Again, he may not have seen it; but the Great Wall of China is the only structure built by man which is visible from the moon! Indeed travelers can be blind. As I said earlier Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in h is book.It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God.Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray — a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or else! Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning and the prowli ng horror in his heart would have kept its place, chained to its lair. But he foolishly exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle and lo! he darkness found him out. In my original conception of this essay I had thought to conclude it nicely on an appropriately positive note in which I would suggest from my privileged position in African and Western cultures some advantages the West might derive from Africa once it rid its mind of old prejudices and began to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions and cheap mystifications but quite simply as a continent of people — not angels, but not rudimentary souls either — just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society.But as I thought more about the stereotype image, about its grip and pervasiveness, about the willful tenacity with which the West holds it to its heart; when I thought of the West's television and cinema and newspapers, a bout books read in its schools and out of school, of churches preaching to empty pews about the need to send help to the heathen in Africa, I realized that no easy optimism was possible. And there was, in any case, something totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa. Ultimately the abandonment of unwholesome thoughts must be its own and only reward.Although I have used the word willful a few times here to characterize the West's view of Africa, it may well be that what is happening at this stage is more akin to reflex action than calculated malice. Which does not make the situation more but less hopeful. The Christian Science Monitor, a paper more enlightened than most, once carried an interesting article written by its Education Editor on the serious psychological and learning problems faced by little children who speak one language at home and then go to school where something else is spoken.It was a wide-ranging article taking in Spanis h-speaking children in America, the children of migrant Italian workers in Germany, the quadrilingual phenomenon in Malaysia, and so on. And all this while the article speaks unequivocally about language. But then out of the blue sky comes this: In London there is an enormous immigration of children who speak Indian or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language. I believe that the introduction of dialects which is technically erroneous in the context is almost a reflex action caused by an instinctive desire of the writer to downgrade the discussion to the level of Africa and India.And this is quite comparable to Conrad's withholding of language from his rudimentary souls. Language is too grand for these chaps; let's give them dialects! In all this business a lot of violence is inevitably done not only to the image of despised peoples but even to words, the very tools of possible redress. Look at the phrase native language in the Science Monitor excerpt. Surely the only native language possible in London is Cockney English. But our writer means something else — something appropriate to the sounds Indians and Africans make!Although the work of redressing which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin. Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad.

Book Report on the Blind Side Essay

The Blind side The Blind Side directed by John Lee Hancock was a visual text about a teenage boy named Michael. Based on a true story Michael, nicknamed Big Mike has grown up in a poor and broken family and goes to a public school where no one really cares about him. Growing up this way has left Big Mike emotionally deprived and lonely. Thanks to his Friend’s dad Michael gets the opportunity to go to a private school on a scholarship. Suddenly he has teachers that care about him and while his life seems to be slowly improving, Big Mike still uses other people’s washing machines in the Laundromat, does not sleep at home and stays at the gym at school because it was warm. The biggest turning point in this movie was when Leigh Anne Touhy sees Big Mike on the side of the road and lets Big Mike have a place to stay. Leigh is a woman that gets what she wants and it is clear from the moment she meets Mike that she would care for him. From this point Big Mike and Leigh build a strong relation ship, he ends up moving in with them and becomes a part of the family. Michael is a big man and one of the reasons he was accepted into the school was because he had the perfect build to play American football and by the end of the movie Big Mike was one of the top players and went on to have a career in it. My favorite character throughout the book was definitely Big Mike, I love how complex of a character the director made him. Appearance wise, Big Mike looked big and tough, he was the type of boy that you would walk the opposite direction when you see him on the street, but when you see him in the movie you discover how kind hearted he is. A classic example of this is when Big Mike is first playing football and he doesn’t tackle anyone because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He reminds me of a giant teddy bear that wouldn’t hurt anyone. But then as well as his kind heart if you dig deeper you can see the inner strength he possesses. From a very young age Michael is forced to look after himself and to get through it the way he did could only be done with utter strength. When most people are left with no one they give up but I admire Big Mike so much for turning to himself and doing all he could to make his life work. Not only is this but his loyalty unbreakable. To get Big Mike to tackle at the practice Leigh said to him to pretend that these guys were going to hurt her and his family and that’s when he finally tackled with aggression. You could see then and there that Big Mike would take on anyone that tried to hurt his family and those he cared about. To me it Big Mike is, for lack of a better expression, a total cutie. My favorite part of the movie is when Leigh asks Big Mike if he would like to be part of their family and Big Mike looks at her dead seriously and replies ‘I thought I already was.’ Throughout the whole movie it was this character that constantly impressed and engaged me and the fact that it was based on a true story just adds to this. One of the main ideas in the visual text The Blind Side is courage. Leigh Touhy shows courage when she takes Mike Oher from off the streets and gives him a roof over his head and someone to lean on. This showed courage in the best of ways and it couldn’t off been done to anyone else. Although Leigh’s family did not agree with having Mike there in the first place, then soon got to like the guy and really enjoyed having him there as another brother or son. It also took real courage for Leigh and Michael to legally adopt Big Mike as a child, get his driver license and help him get into the best school available for Mike to go to on a football scholarship. Leigh also had courage for going to her own friends and telling them about Mike. A conversation held with her friends is. Friend: â€Å"You’re changing that boy’s life† Leigh: â€Å"No He’s changing mine†. I thought that Leigh had courage to say this to her friends as Mike is not her own son yet she is taking care of him as he is the only child in the family. A quote from the film The Blind Side to represent Courage is â€Å"that’s why courage is tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you’re doing something. I mean, any fool can have courage†. This is saying that courage is important but it’s hard. You should do what you want to do and not what others tell you to do,  but the main point is that anyone can have courage; weather their big, small, tall or short. The text that I immediately thought of was The Dead Poets society and in particular Neil. The reason for this is in my mind I started to immediately compare the difference between Neil and Michael. As I previously stated Big Mike had to deal with the loneliness in his life and the way he did this was by turning to himself for support. I think the reason that Neil committed suicide was loneliness, by this I don’t mean that he had no friends, as it was obvious from the start he did, but that he felt like he had no support from those that mattered. If his dad had shown a slight interest in his acting career then Neil would have been satisfied but because his dad seemed not to care Neil felt like he had no one to turn to and no options. This is the difference that I see between Neil and Michael, inner strength. While Michael appeared soft throughout the visual text, to carry on living especially in certain points in his life took incredible inner strength and as much as I liked Ne il’s character I don’t think he possessed the same strength. Neil is kind of the polar opposite, on the outside he appeared to be strong and content with life but on the inside the way his father was acting slowly killed him inside. Both of these characters had parents that weren’t at all good at their job but it was the difference between the two personalities that ended with one dead and the other a professional football player.