Standard Costing, Operational Performance Measures

CHAPTER 10 STANDARD COSTING, OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES 1. MANAGING COSTS 1. Standard-cost systems are used to help managers control the cost of operations. The system has three components: standard costs (i. e. , predetermined costs), actual costs, and the difference between the two figures (termed a variance). 2. A standard cost for each product cost category (materials, labor, and overhead) is calculated on a per-unit basis. ? This calculation considers the planned quantity of each input factor allowed (pounds, hours, etc. and the planned price for each input factor (price per pound, rate per hour, etc. ). The total planned cost is a mini, per-unit budgeted amount. †¢ After the actual costs are known, a report is generated that shows actual costs, planned costs, and related variances. A manager can examine the variance column quickly to ascertain which exceptions require attention. ? Following up on significant variances is called management by exception. Managers focus their efforts where they are most needed in the limited time available. 2. SETTING STANDARDS . Managers set standards by analyzing historical data. However, past data must be adjusted for expected changes in technology, the production process, inflation, and other similar factors. ? Managers also use task analysis to focus on how much a product should cost. †¢ Knowledgeable people such as engineers, purchasing agents, production supervisors, and accountants should be brought into the standard-setting process. Cross-functional teams are very useful here. 4. Two types of standards may be used: perfection standards and practical standards. Perfection (ideal) standards assume that production takes place in the ideal world: employees always work at peak performance, materials are never defective, and machines never break down. ? Although some managers feel that ideal standards give employees a goal to shoot for, many behavioral scientists believe that setting unattainable goals has a demotivating effect, as employees simply give up trying to reach the standard. ? Practical (attainable) standards are set high enough to encourage efficient and effective operations but not so high as to seem impossible. Behavioral scientists feel that practical standards have a more positive effect on the productivity of employees. ? Unlike variances computed with perfection standards, variances calculated when practical standards are employed tend to be more meaningful as they represent deviations from a realistic goal. †¢ Service firms also use standards. For example, McDonald's restaurants are noted for using standards, not only for quantities of material (amount of beef per burger) but also for the time allowed to serve customers at the drive-in window or counter. . VARIANCE ANALYSIS 5. Variance analysis involves calculating the actual amount of input used and comparing it to the budgeted amount of input that should have been used (i. e. , the standard cost allowed for actual output). The variance is then analyzed into its component parts. 6. Standards are established for: ? The amount of material required to produce a finished product (the standard material quantity). ? The anticipated delivered cost of materials (the standard material price). The number of hours normally needed to manufacture one unit of product (the standard direct-labor quantity). ? The estimated hourly cost of compensation (the standard labor rate). †¢ The following model can be used to calculate variances for direct materials (DM) and direct labor (DL): DM Price = (AQ Purchased x AP) – (AQ Purchased x SP) DM Quantity = (AQ Used x SP) – (SQ Used* x SP) DL Rate = (AQ x AP) – (AQ x SP) DL Efficiency = (AQ x SP) – (SQ* x SP) * Standard quantity for the actual production levelNotice that the price and rate variances use a similar approach, and the quantity and efficiency variances use a similar approach, with efficiency being another way to say â €Å"quantity of hours† allowed. †¢ Unfavorable variances arise when the actual cost per unit of input (e. g. , gallons, hours, etc. ) exceeds standard cost and when actual quantities used (e. g. , gallons, hours, etc. ) exceed standard quantities. The opposite situation gives rise to favorable variances. 4. VARIANCE INVESTIGATION 1.A manager does not have time to examine each variance; therefore, he or she must consider selected factors in deciding when an investigation should take place. The factors include one or more of the following: ? Size of the variance (in absolute and/or relative terms, such as $5,000 or 10% of standard cost) ? Frequency of occurrence ? An otherwise small variance may require investigation if it consistently occurs, as it may indicate an ongoing problem or an outdated standard. ? Trends ? Controllability (there is little point to investigate items over which managers have no control). Favorable variances ? A manager should investigate both favor able and unfavorable variances. A favorable variance with advertising expense, for instance, could lead to the conclusion that an insufficient amount is being spent on promotion, which could lead to a loss of customers. ? Costs and benefits (the decision to investigate involves a cost-benefit analysis, as a number of investigative costs are incurred). Some companies use a statistical approach to variance investigation by preparing a statistical control chart. These charts help to pinpoint random and nonrandom variances, with a statistically determined critical value being compared to a variance to determine whether an investigation is warranted. 5. BEHAVIORAL IMPACT OF STANDARD COSTING 1. Variances may be used to evaluate personnel, often with regard to salary increases, bonuses, and promotions. ? Such incentives can have positive and negative effects, as a bonus plan may prompt a manager to pursue actions that are not in the best interests of the organization. ? An example of detri mental behavior: A purchasing manager may purchase cheap material to create a favorable price variance.That material could be of poor quality, which might result in excess usage and problems with the finished product. 6. CONTROLLABILITY OF VARIANCES 2. It is rare that one person controls any event; however, it is often possible to identify the manager who is most able to influence a particular variance. These managers are often the following: ? Direct-material price variance—Purchasing manager ? Direct-material quantity variance—Production supervisor and/or production engineers ? Direct-labor rate variance—Production supervisor ? Direct-labor efficiency variance—Production supervisor . Variances often interact, making investigation and controllability difficult. For example, a labor efficiency variance may be caused by problems not only with labor but by problems with machinery and/or material. ? Managers sometimes trade-off variances, purposely incurring an unfavorable variance that is more than offset by favorable variances. 7. STANDARD COSTS AND PRODUCT COSTING 4. In a standard-cost system, costs flow through the same accounts in the general ledger as shown earlier in the text; however, they flow through at standard cost.In other words, Work-in-Process Inventory, Finished-Goods Inventory, and Cost of Goods Sold are carried at standard cost. 8. ADVANTAGES OF STANDARD COSTS 2. A standard-cost system has several advantages, as follows: ? Managers have a sensible comparison method at their disposal, one that looks at budgeted costs vs. actual costs at the actual level of output. ? Managers can practice management by exception. ? Variances provide a benchmark for performance evaluation and employee rewards. ? Standard costs provide a stable product cost.Actual costs may fluctuate erratically, whereas standard costs are changed only periodically. 9. CRITICISMS OF STANDARD COSTING IN TODAY'S MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT 3. Criticisms of st andard costing in advanced manufacturing settings include: ? Variances are too aggregated and arrive too late to be useful. Variances should focus on activities, specific product lines, or production batches. ? Variances focus too much on the cost and efficiency of labor, which is becoming a relatively unimportant factor of production. Standard costs rely on a stable production environment, and flexible manufacturing systems have reduced this stability, with frequent switching among a variety of products on the same manufacturing line. ? Standards focus too much on cost minimization and not enough on product quality, customer service, and other contemporary issues. 10. OPERATIONAL CONTROL MEASURES 5. Many companies now focus on an increased number of performance measures, many of which are nonfinancial in nature. Examples often include: ? Customer-acceptance measures such as customer complaints, warranty claims, and product returns. Delivery cycle time, or the average time between t he receipt of a customer order and the delivery of goods. ? Manufacturing cycle time, or the total production time per unit. ? Manufacturing cycle efficiency, or processing time divided by the sum of processing time, inspection time, waiting time, and move time. †¢ To judge how well or poorly a company is performing, many firms use benchmarking, which involves comparing existing performance levels against those of either other organizations or other units within the same organization. †¢

Anaysis of the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/context. html The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman Table of Contents Context Plot Overview Character List Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Important Quotations Explained Key Facts How to Cite This SparkNote Context Charlotte Perkins Gilman was best known in her time as a crusading journalist and feminist intellectual, a follower of such pioneering women’s rights advocates as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman’s great-aunt.Gilman was concerned with political inequality and social justice in general, but the primary focus of her writing was the unequal status of women within the institution of marriage. In such works as Concerning Children(1900), The Home (1904), and Human Work (1904), Gilman argued that women’s obligation to remain in the domestic sphere robbed them of the expression of their full powers of creativity and intelligence, while s imultaneously robbing society of women whose abilities suited them for professional and public life.An essential part of her analysis was that the traditional power structure of the family made no one happy—not the woman who was made into an unpaid servant, not the husband who was made into a master, and not the children who were subject to both. Her most ambitious work, Women and Economics (1898), analyzed the hidden value of women’s labor within the capitalist economy and argued, as Gilman did throughout her works, that financial independence for women could only benefit society as a whole.Today, Gilman is primarily known for one remarkable story, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† which was considered almost unprintably shocking in its time and which unnerves readers to this day. This short work of fiction, which deals with an unequal marriage and a woman destroyed by her unfulfilled desire for self-expression, deals with the same concerns and ideas as Gilmanâ€⠄¢s nonfiction but in a much more personal mode. Indeed, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† draws heavily on a particularly painful episode in Gilman’s own life.In 1886, early in her first marriage and not long after the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (as she was then known) was stricken with a severe case of depression. In her 1935 autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she describes her â€Å"utter prostration† byâ€Å"unbearable inner misery† and â€Å"ceaseless tears,† a condition only made worse by the presence of her husband and her baby. She was referred to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, then the country’s leading specialist in nervous disorders, whose treatment in such cases was a â€Å"rest cure† of forced inactivity.Especially in the case of his female patients, Mitchell believed that depression was brought on by too much mental activity and not enough attention to domestic affairs. For Gilman, this course of treatment was a disaster. Prevented from working, she soon had a nervous breakdown. At her worst, she was reduced to crawling into closets and under beds, clutching a rag doll. Once she abandoned Mitchell’s rest cure, Gilman’s condition improved, though she claimed to feel the effects of the ordeal for the rest of her life.Leaving behind her husband and child, a scandalous decision, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (she took the name Gilman after a second marriage, to her cousin) embarked on a successful career as a journalist, lecturer, and publisher. She wrote â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† soon after her move to California, and in it she uses her personal experience to create a tale that is both a chilling description of one woman’s fall into madness and a potent symbolic narrative of the fate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture.In purely literary terms, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† looks back to the tradition of the psychological horro r tale as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe. For example, Poe’sâ€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† is also told from the point of view of an insane narrator. Going further back, Gilman also draws on the tradition of the Gothic romances of the late eighteenth century, which often featured spooky old mansions and young heroines determined to uncover their secrets.Gilman’s story is also forward-looking, however, and her moment-by-moment reporting of the narrator’s thoughts is clearly a move in the direction of the sort of stream-of-consciousness narration used by such twentieth-century writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Plot Overview The narrator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long.Her fee ling that there is â€Å"something queer† about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness—she is suffering from â€Å"nervous depression†Ã¢â‚¬â€and of her marriage. She complains that her husband John, who is also her doctor, belittles both her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She contrasts his practical, rationalistic manner with her own imaginative, sensitive ways. Her treatment requires that she do almost nothing active, and she is especially forbidden from working and writing.She feels that activity, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to â€Å"relieve her mind. † In an attempt to do so, the narrator begins describing the house. Her description is mostly positive, but disturbing elements such as the â€Å"rings and things† in the bedroom walls, and the bars on the windows, keep showing up. She is particularly disturbed by the yellow wa llpaper in the bedroom, with its strange, formless pattern, and describes it as â€Å"revolting. † Soon, however, her thoughts are interrupted by John’s approach, and she is forced to stop writing.As the first few weeks of the summer pass, the narrator becomes good at hiding her journal, and thus hiding her true thoughts from John. She continues to long for more stimulating company and activity, and she complains again about John’s patronizing, controlling ways—although she immediately returns to the wallpaper, which begins to seem not only ugly, but oddly menacing. She mentions that John is worried about her becoming fixated on it, and that he has even refused to repaper the room so as not to give in to her neurotic worries.The narrator’s imagination, however, has been aroused. She mentions that she enjoys picturing people on the walkways around the house and that John always discourages such fantasies. She also thinks back to her childhood, when she was able to work herself into a terror by imagining things in the dark. As she describes the bedroom, which she says must have been a nursery for young children, she points out that the paper is torn off the wall in spots, there are scratches and gouges in the floor, and the furniture is heavy and fixed in place.Just as she begins to see a strange sub-pattern behind the main design of the wallpaper, her writing is interrupted again, this time by John’s sister, Jennie, who is acting as housekeeper and nurse for the narrator. As the Fourth of July passes, the narrator reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. John threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the real-life physician under whose care Gilman had a nervous breakdown. The narrator is alone most of the time and says that she has become almost fond of the wallpaper and that attempting to figure out its pattern has become her primary entertainment.As her obsession grows, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer. It begins to resemble a woman â€Å"stooping down and creeping† behind the main pattern, which looks like the bars of a cage. Whenever the narrator tries to discuss leaving the house, John makes light of her concerns, effectively silencing her. Each time he does so, her disgusted fascination with the paper grows. Soon the wallpaper dominates the narrator’s imagination. She becomes possessive and secretive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she can â€Å"find it out† on her own.At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been touching the wallpaper and who mentions that she had found yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the narrator’s fixation for tranquility, John thinks she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convinced that she can smell the paper all over the house, even outside. She discovers a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all around the roo m, as if it had been rubbed by someone crawling against the wall. The sub-pattern now clearly resembles a woman who is trying to get out from behind the main pattern.The narrator sees her shaking the bars at night and creeping around during the day, when the woman is able to escape briefly. The narrator mentions that she, too, creeps around at times. She suspects that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, and she resolves to destroy the paper once and for all, peeling much of it off during the night. The next day she manages to be alone and goes into something of a frenzy, biting and tearing at the paper in order to free the trapped woman, whom she sees struggling from inside the pattern.By the end, the narrator is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaper—that she herself is the trapped woman. She creeps endlessly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes. When John breaks into th e locked room and sees the full horror of the situation, he faints in the doorway, so that the narrator has â€Å"to creep over him every time! † Character List The Narrator – A young, upper-middle-class woman, newly married and a mother, who is undergoing care for depression.The narrator—whose name may or may not be Jane—is highly imaginative and a natural storyteller, though her doctors believe she has a â€Å"slight hysterical tendency. † The story is told in the form of her secret diary, in which she records her thoughts as her obsession with the wallpaper grows. Read an in-depth analysis of The Narrator. John – The narrator’s husband and her physician. John restricts her behavior as part of her treatment. Unlike his imaginative wife, John is extremely practical, preferring facts and figures to â€Å"fancy,† at which he â€Å"scoffs openly. He seems to love his wife, but he does not understand the negative effect his treat ment has on her. Read an in-depth analysis of John. Jennie – John’s sister. Jennie acts as housekeeper for the couple. Her presence and her contentment with a domestic role intensify the narrator’s feelings of guilt over her own inability to act as a traditional wife and mother. Jennie seems, at times, to suspect that the narrator is more troubled than she lets on. Analysis of Major Characters The NarratorThe narrator of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a paradox: as she loses touch with the outer world, she comes to a greater understanding of the inner reality of her life. This inner/outer split is crucial to understanding the nature of the narrator’s suffering. At every point, she is faced with relationships, objects, and situations that seem innocent and natural but that are actually quite bizarre and even oppressive. In a sense, the plot of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is the narrator’s attempt to avoid acknowledging the extent to wh ich her external situation stifles her inner impulses.From the beginning, we see that the narrator is an imaginative, highly expressive woman. She remembers terrifying herself with imaginary nighttime monsters as a child, and she enjoys the notion that the house they have taken is haunted. Yet as part of her â€Å"cure,† her husband forbids her to exercise her imagination in any way. Both her reason and her emotions rebel at this treatment, and she turns her imagination onto seemingly neutral objects—the house and the wallpaper—in an attempt to ignore her growing frustration.Her negative feelings color her description of her surroundings, making them seem uncanny and sinister, and she becomes fixated on the wallpaper. As the narrator sinks further into her inner fascination with the wallpaper, she becomes progressively more dissociated from her day-to-day life. This process of dissociation begins when the story does, at the very moment she decides to keep a secr et diary as â€Å"a relief to her mind. † From that point, her true thoughts are hidden from the outer world, and the narrator begins to slip into a fantasy world in which the nature of â€Å"her situation† is made clear in symbolic terms.Gilman shows us this division in the narrator’s consciousness by having the narrator puzzle over effects in the world that she herself has caused. For example, the narrator doesn’t immediately understand that the yellow stains on her clothing and the long â€Å"smootch† on the wallpaper are connected. Similarly, the narrator fights the realization that the predicament of the woman in the wallpaper is a symbolic version of her own situation. At first she even disapproves of the woman’s efforts to escape and intends to â€Å"tie her up. †When the narrator finally identifies herself with the woman trapped in the wallpaper, she is able to see that other women are forced to creep and hide behind the domes tic â€Å"patterns† of their lives, and that she herself is the one in need of rescue. The horror of this story is that the narrator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangled the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself apart in getting free of it. An odd detail at the end of the story reveals how much the narrator has sacrificed. During her final split from reality, the narrator says, â€Å"I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. Who is this Jane? Some critics claim â€Å"Jane† is a misprint for â€Å"Jennie,†the sister-in-law. It is more likely, however, that â€Å"Jane† is the name of the unnamed narrator, who has been a stranger to herself and her jailers. Now she is horribly â€Å"free† of the constraints of her marriage, her society, and her own efforts to repress her mind. John Though John seems like the obvious villain of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† the story does not allow us to see him as whol ly evil. John’s treatment of the narrator’s depression goes terribly wrong, but in all likelihood he was trying to help her, not make her worse.The real problem with John is the all-encompassing authority he has in his combined role as the narrator’s husband and doctor. John is so sure that he knows what’s best for his wife that he disregards her own opinion of the matter, forcing her to hide her true feelings. He consistently patronizes her. He calls her â€Å"a blessed little goose† and vetoes her smallest wishes, such as when he refuses to switch bedrooms so as not to overindulge her â€Å"fancies. † Further, his dry, clinical rationality renders him uniquely unsuited to understand his imaginative wife.He does not intend to harm her, but his ignorance about what she really needs ultimately proves dangerous. John knows his wife only superficially. He sees the â€Å"outer pattern† but misses the trapped, struggling woman inside. This ignorance is why John is no mere cardboard villain. He cares for his wife, but the unequal relationship in which they find themselves prevents him from truly understanding her and her problems. By treating her as a â€Å"case† or a â€Å"wife† and not as a person with a will of her own, he helps destroy her, which is the last thing he wants.That John has been destroyed by this imprisoning relationship is made clear by the story’s chilling finale. After breaking in on his insane wife, John faints in shock and goes unrecognized by his wife, who calls him â€Å"that man† and complains about having to â€Å"creep over him† as she makes her way along the wall. Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes The Subordination of Women in Marriage In â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† Gilman uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the â€Å"respectableâ₠¬ classes of her time.When the story was first published, most readers took it as a scary tale about a woman in an extreme state of consciousness—a gripping, disturbing entertainment, but little more. After its rediscovery in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story have become more complex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the â€Å"domestic† functions of the female and the â€Å"active† work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens.The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of â€Å"helping† her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross, petulant child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming un reasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of her mind.The Importance of Self-Expression [pic] The mental constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the facade of a happy marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the compulsory silence and idleness of the â€Å"resting cure. † She is forced to become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way.Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual in sanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is constantly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than once as a â€Å"relief† to her mind. For Gilman, a mind that is kept in a state of forced inactivity is doomed to self-destruction.The Evils of the â€Å"Resting Cure† As someone who almost was destroyed by S. Weir Mitchell’s â€Å"resting cure† for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman structured her story as an attack on this ineffective and cruel course of treatment. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. To his credit, Mitchell, who is mentioned by name in the story, took Gilman’s criticism to heart and abandoned the â€Å"resting cu re. Beyond the specific technique described in the story, Gilman means to criticize any form of medical care that ignores the concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of treatment. The connection between a woman’s subordination in the home and her subordination in a doctor/patient relationship is clear—John is, after all, the narrator’s husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of authority can be easily abused, even when the husband or doctor means to help.All too often, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority are infantilized, or worse. Motifs Irony Almost every aspect of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is ironic in some way. Irony is a way of using words to convey multiple levels of meaning that contrast with or complicate one another. In verbal irony, words are frequently used to convey the exact opposite of their literal meaning, such as when one person responds to another’s mistake by saying †Å"nice work. † (Sarcasm—which this example embodies—is a form of verbal irony. In her journal, the narrator uses verbal irony often, especially in reference to her husband: â€Å"John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. † Obviously, one expects no such thing, at least not in a healthy marriage. Later, she says, â€Å"I am glad my case is not serious,† at a point when it is clear that she is concerned that her case is very serious indeed. Dramatic irony occurs when there is a contrast between the reader’s knowledge and the knowledge of the characters in the work.Dramatic irony is used extensively in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper. † For example, when the narrator first describes the bedroom John has chosen for them, she attributes the room’s bizarre features—the â€Å"rings and things† in the walls, the nailed-down furniture, the bars on the windows, and the torn wallpaper—to the fact that it must have once been used as a nursery. Even this early in the story, the reader sees that there is an equally plausible explanation for these details: the room had been used to house an insane person.Another example is when the narrator assumes that Jennie shares her interest in the wallpaper, while it is clear that Jennie is only now noticing the source of the yellow stains on their clothing. The effect intensifies toward the end of the story, as the narrator sinks further into her fantasy and the reader remains able to see her actions from theâ€Å"outside. † By the time the narrator fully identifies with the trapped woman she sees in the wallpaper, the reader can appreciate the narrator’s experience from her point of view as well as John’s shock at what he sees when he breaks down the door to the bedroom.Situational irony refers to moments when a character’s actions have the opposite of their intended effect. For example, John’s course of tre atment backfires, worsening the depression he was trying to cure and actually driving his wife insane. Similarly, there is a deep irony in the way the narrator’s fate develops. She gains a kind of power and insight only by losing what we would call her self-control and reason. The Journal An â€Å"epistolary† work of fiction takes the form of letters between characters. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a kind of epistolary story, in which the narrator writes to herself.Gilman uses this technique to show the narrator’s descent into madness both subjectively and objectively—that is, from both the inside and the outside. Had Gilman told her story in traditional first-person narration, reporting events from inside the narrator’s head, the reader would never know exactly what to think: a woman inside the wallpaper might seem to actually exist. Had Gilman told the story from an objective, third-person point of view, without revealing the narratorâ⠂¬â„¢s thoughts, the social and political symbolism of the story would have been obscured.As it is, the reader must decipher the ambiguity of the story, just as the narrator must attempt to decipher the bewildering story of her life and the bizarre patterns of the wallpaper. Gilman also uses the journal to give the story an intense intimacy and immediacy, especially in those moments when the narrative is interrupted by the approach of John or Jennie. These interruptions perfectly illustrate the constraints placed on the narrator by authority figures who urge her not to think about herâ€Å"condition. † Symbols The Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper† is driven by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an â€Å"unclean yellow. † The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light.Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women.Important Quotations Explained 1. If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothin g the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to â€Å"work† until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . Explanation for Quotation 1 >> In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrator’s dilemma are present.The powerful, authoritative voices of her husband, her family, and the medical establishment urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, is that what she needs is precisely the opposite—activity and stimulation. From the outset, her opinions carry little weight. â€Å"Personally,† she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The confusion over â€Å"phosphates or phosphites † is in character for someone who is not particularly interested in factual accuracy.And the choppy rhythm of the sentences, often broken into one-line paragraphs, helps evoke the hurried writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the agitated state of her mind. Close 2. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. Explanation for Quotation 2 >>This section appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrator’s dilemma and the narrator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling John’s instructions. Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husband’s authority to the point that she practically hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the end—focusing on the house instead of her situation—marks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness.This mental struggle, this desperate attempt not to think about her unhappiness, makes her project her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of â€Å"her condition. †The play on words here is typical of Gilman’s consistent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about herâ€Å"condition,† that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit . I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here! Explanation for Quotation 3 >> About halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being drawn further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing truth about her life. Gilman’s irony is actively at work here: the â€Å"things† in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing ideas she is coming to understand.She is simultaneously jealous of the secret (â€Å"nobody knows but me†) and frightened of what it seems to imply. Again the narrator tries to deny her growing insight (â€Å"the dim shapes get clearer every day†), but she is powerless to extricate herself. Small wonder that the woman she sees is always â€Å"stooping down and creeping about. † Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic â€Å"pattern† from which no escape is poss ible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 >>This comment comes just after the scene in which the narrator catches Jennie touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†: Gilman’s bitter, sarcastic sense of humor. Now that the narrator has become hopelessly obsessed with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no longer bored. Gilman manages to combine humor and dread in such moments. The comment is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well.Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered burning the house down in order to eliminate the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those c reeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 >> Important Quotations Explained 1. If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to â€Å"work† until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . Explanation for Quotation 1 >> In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrator’s dilemma are present. The powerful, authoritative voices of her husband, her family, and the medical establishment urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, is that what she needs is precisely the opposite—activ ity and stimulation.From the outset, her opinions carry little weight. â€Å"Personally,† she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The confusion over â€Å"phosphates or phosphites† is in character for someone who is not particularly interested in factual accuracy. And the choppy rhythm of the sentences, often broken into one-line paragraphs, helps evoke the hurried writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the agitated state of her mind. Close . I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. Explanation for Quotation 2 >> This section appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrator’s dilemma and the nar rator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling John’s instructions.Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husband’s authority to the point that she practically hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the end—focusing on the house instead of her situation—marks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness. This mental struggle, this desperate attempt not to think about her unhappiness, makes her project her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of â€Å"her condition. The play on words here is typical of Gilman’s consistent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about herâ€Å"condition,† that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here! Explanation for Quotation 3 >>About halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being drawn further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing truth about her life. Gilman’s irony is actively at work here: the â€Å"things† in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing ideas she is coming to understand. She is simultaneously jealous of the secret (â€Å"nobody knows but me†) and frightened of what it seems to imply. Again the narrator tries to deny her growing insight (â€Å"the dim shapes get clearer ever y day†), but she is powerless to extricate herself.Small wonder that the woman she sees is always â€Å"stooping down and creeping about. † Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic â€Å"pattern† from which no escape is possible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 >> This comment comes just after the scene in which the narrator catches Jennie touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†: Gilman’s bitter, sarcastic sense of humor.Now that the narrator has become hopelessly obsessed with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no longer bored. Gilman manages to combine humor and dread in such moments. The comment is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well. Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered burning the house down in order to eliminate the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 >> In the story’s final scene, just before John finally breaks into her room, the narrator has finished tearing off enough of the wallpaper that the woman she saw inside is now free—and the two women have become one. This passage is the exact moment of full identification, when the narrator finally makes the connection she has been avoiding, a connection that the reader has made already. The woman behind the pattern was an image of herself—she has been the one â€Å"stooping and creeping. Further, she knows that there are many women just like her, so many that she is afraid to look at them. The question she asks is poignant and complex: did they all have to struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were really prisons? Did they all have to tear their lives up at the roots in order to be free? The narrator, unable to answer these questions, leaves them for another woman—or the reader—to ponder. Key Facts title  · â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† author  · Charlotte Perkins Gilman type of work  · Short story genre  · Gothic horror tale; character study; socio-political allegory language  · English ime and place written  · 1892, California date of first publication  · May, 1892 publisher  · The New England Magazine narrator  · A mentally troubled young woman, possibly named Jane point of view  · As the main character’s fictional journal, the story is told in strict first-person narration, focusing exclusively on her own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Everything that we learn or see in the story is filtered through the narrator’s shifting consciousness, and since the narrator goes insane over the course of the story, her perception of reality is often completely at odds with that of the other characters. one  · The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperation—a tone Gilman wants the reader to share. tense  · The story stays close to the narrator’s thoughts at the moment and is thus mostly in the present tense. setting (time)  · Late nineteenth century setting (place)  · America, in a large summer home (or possibly an old asylum), primarily in one bedroom within the house. rotagonist  · The narrator, a young upper-middle-class woman who is suffering from what is most likely postpartum depression and whose illness gives her insight into her (and other women’s) situation in society and in marriage, even as the treatment she undergoes robs her of her sanity. major conf lict  · The struggle between the narrator and her husband, who is also her doctor, over the nature and treatment of her illness leads to a conflict within the narrator’s mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness. ising action  · The narrator decides to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her dislike for her bedroom wallpaper, a dislike that gradually intensifies into obsession. climax  · The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper. falling action  · The narrator, now completely identified with the woman in the wallpaper,spends her time crawling on all fours around the room. Her husband discovers her and collapses in shock, and she keeps crawling, right over his fallen body. hemes  · The subordination of women in marriage; the importance of self-expression; the evils of the â€Å"Resting Cure† motifs  · Irony; the journal symbols  · The wallpaper foreshadowing  · The discovery of the teeth marks on the bedstead foreshadows the narrator’s own insanity and suggests the narrator is not revealing everything about her behavior; the first use of the word â€Å"creepy† foreshadows the increasing desperation of the narrator’s situation and her own eventualâ€Å"creeping. † How to Cite This SparkNote Full Bibliographic Citation MLA: SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. † SparkNotes. com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. The Chicago Manual of Style: SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. † SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). APA: SparkNotes Editors. (2006). SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ In Text Citation MLA: â€Å"Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid† (SparkNotes Editors). APA: â€Å"Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid† (SparkNotes Editors, 2006).Footnote The Chicago Manual of Style: Chicago requires the use of footnotes, rather than parenthetical citations, in conjunction with a list of works cited when dealing with literature. 1 SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. † SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). [pic] Please be sure to cite your sources. For more information about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, please read our article on The Plagiarism Plague. If you have any questions regarding how to use or include references to SparkNotes in your work, please tell us.

Taking A stand Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Taking A stand - Essay Example Undoubtedly drinking water is available in the world in plenty but due to extensive use of water by high class people the lower classes gets affected and they lack to access to safe water. Availability of drinking water is becoming a matter of concern at present circumstances due to these issues. Most importantly, it can become a threat for the future generations. It has been observed by scientists that volume of safe drinking water is decreasing across the globe. In the United States of America, the Colorado River was one of the main sources of water. The water of Colorado River is still supplied in Las Vegas. Due to intense pollution and wastage the flow of water has drastically reduced in Colorado River. The pollution of Ohio River is another challenge in front of the world. According to Charles McMahon, â€Å"Improvising waste water treatment through increased regulation is a possible way to decrease the effects of enormous consumption and wastage of water† (McMahon 34). This phenomenon is very common in many countries regarding water recycling in order to overcome shortage of water. In the nineteenth century, water was wasted at a very large scale due to lack of advanced technological processes’ presence. Due to lack of knowledge people used large amount of water and at the same time polluted water at a large scale. When dams were built for production of electricity and controlled flow it was highly appreciated. However the consequences were in front of people very soon. For example the fact of Colorado River was not a very common phenomenon. Colorado River was one of the most important sources of fresh water in the United States. The Grand Canyon was the resident of some early civilizations however because of huge pollution and construction of dam the flow of the water reduced tremendously. This became one of the most important concerns before the country. This example shows the

Components of Qualitative Approach Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Components of Qualitative Approach - Assignment Example The three topics all involve the use of qualitative information. To investigate the political opinions of citizens of a country A, a researcher has to set interviews that will convert qualitative attributes to quantitative measures. For example, an interview can set a question like â€Å"Do the contestants you intend to vote for know your economic challenges†. The responses can be assigned numeric indices to measure their strengths for example: Interviews usually have challenges during data collection because it deals with personal opinions and often touches on sensitive issues which many respondents may not be willing to provide information on. There is always a risk of collecting inaccurate data due to confidentiality. Secondly, respondents do not realize the importance of the data being collected. They thus do not present exact information. They either exaggerate and fabricate information or conceal real truth. Thirdly, language barrier may prevent the interviewer and the respondents from communicating. Involving an interpreter may be irritating to the respondents and they may not take part in the exercise. There are ways of dealing with the challenges in order to improve the quality of data collected. For the sake of accuracy, it is ideal to express friendliness to the respondents in order to win their confidence. This will encourage them to be honest with their information. The issue of language barrier can only be solved using an interpreter. It means the researcher has the responsibility to acquire an interpreter. Qualitative interviews according to the perspectives of Singh (2007) are essential for research works first, because the information regarding social and political subjects is usually of qualitative nature. Secondly, it is easier to interpret qualitative information into measurable quantities that people can easily understand. Qualitative

Social and Cultural Factors are the Most Important in Determining Essay

Social and Cultural Factors are the Most Important in Determining Gender Roles - Essay Example From this research it is clear that gender roles have existed for almost as long as the human race has existed and it is quite possible that they will continue to exist in the future. According to the essay â€Å"Sex Roles† by McCubbin and Dahl, this is because gender roles depend on social orientations and cultural practices that mold people’s lives and mentalities. For example, if a person considers himself or herself to be female, he, or she would be expected to display the characteristics that are typically associated with being female. It would include traits such as being gentle, dependent, and expressive of their feelings. Therefore, culture and society is more important in determining the gender roles of an individual than their biological orientations are because biological factors remain constant depending on a person’s gender and yet social and cultural helps to determine gender roles of individuals within it and help individuals understand their socie ties. Even though the researcher agrees with McCubbin and Dahlwhen in their further argument that a person’s biological factors within a society have long been used to predict the person’s behavior, evidence discredits biological factors in favor of social and cultural factors. This is because the latter conditions vary with gender roles across societies. Similarly, according to the essay â€Å"Sex Roles† by McCubbin and Dahlwhen research on the relationship between sex hormones, that is the main biological factor, and physical and behavioral attributes is not yet complete.

Customer services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Customer services - Essay Example Purchasing, product quality and product manufacture may never interact or talk to clients directly, yet they are crucial aspects in meeting the needs of the customers. If a business wants to deliver costly goods that, does not work and make late delivery, this affects consumer service in the same way as the effects of rude sales representative will do. The entire business should consolidate its efforts to offer adequate and effective customer service. The paper will investigate different ways of enhancing customer service to enhance the profitability of an enterprise. Discussion In a bid to compete effectively in a real customer-driven way, a business must integrate its whole business operations around meeting the needs and wants if its customers – not marketing, selling and client service, but logistics of production and financial infrastructure and metrics. Business exceeds expectation of their clients by focusing innovation attempts in different areas such as creating frien dly customer process, ensuring workers commitment to services of customers and client dialog, (James, 2009, p.12). A business attains some excellence in these areas to attain effective customer service. Businesses with better customer services comprehend that providing a superior experience for clients’ triggers loyalty and enhance combine results. ... Managers should understand and improve clients experience with their products and overall business transactions and services, (Kerr, 1996, p41). Similarly, business should streamline its resources without compromising its essentials. The company should maintain close contact with its clients on a regular manner, update them with free product and service information and ensure client satisfaction. This is because mood and perception of customers truly matters in any business transaction. For instance, if one is operating a healthcare company, he should understand that his clients are dealing with emotional aspects such as medication and illness, (Leone, 1999, p.45). Therefore, the employees should offer the client with emotional support and offer empathy dimensions to motivate and retain customers. Clientelling model is an effective mechanism used by large-scale companies. It entails pairing a client with a representative or employee who signs in the customer’s actions into the company database and meets future customer services accordingly. This is effective in creating connections with profitable customers, (Macphee, 2011, p.89). A company can improve customer service using cost-cutting strategies that balance the budget without terminating fundamental service, for instances, acting on the terms of the clients. This will involve interacting with clients in appropriate ways. Instead of employing a customer greeter whom clients mainly dismiss, the managers can instruct workers throughout the company to welcome incoming customers. This is about providing services based on the client’s terms. Additionally, create a strong customer

Assignment 4 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

4 - Assignment Example During the flood, one is unable to face the harsh behavior of water and thus people are advised to move to the higher regions before the flood. 1. List and describe the most common causes of floods. Causes of Floods Three major causes are found to cause the floods. Theses causes include Tropical storms, Seasonal flooding, Coastal Flooding (Library.thinkquest.org, 2013). Tropical Storms Tropical storms and hurricanes remain to have high impact on our lives due to the devastating impact of the heavy winds carrying immense amount of water with them. The resulting rains in response to the hurricanes and tropical storms become a cause of flood. Tropical Depression produces a wind of speeds less than 38 miles per hour. In the tropical depression situation winds have relative less speed as compared to that in the hurricane (Erh.noaa.gov, 2013). However, the tropical depressions are found to produce immense rains. Such a type of phenomenon produces some major damages in Georgia with a tremen dous rainfall of about 28 inches that caused flooding. During a tropical Storm the speed of the wind can reach as high as 73 miles per hour and tropical storms are categorized due to having more wind speed (39-73 miles per hour) as compared to the tropical depression. Tropical storms produce immense rain falls that are followed by flooding but some damages are due to the heavy winds. The rainfalls during the tropical storms produce more water than the capacity of the rivers, streams and lakes and thus heavy flooding occurs. Seasonal Flooding In rainy season, (a prolonged raining period mostly in spring or peak summer) the rains may fall more than the capacity of the rivers, streams and lakes and thus the flooding occurs. The flooding is not the sudden rush of water into the streams, lakes and rivers but due to the prolonged period of rains. The water on the rivers, streams and lakes rushes out. The major reason of less absorption of water into the ground is that due to the rains, th e soil becomes saturated and the absorption rate due the unsaturated behavior of the ground lowers and thus the flooding occurs. The melting of the snow during the start of the summer is another reason of the seasonal. It is due to the heavy snow falls in the winter season and during the start of the summer, snow melts and is being converted to huge amount of water that rusher into the streams and at some instance it may become more than the capacity of the streams and rivers that thus the flooding occurs. Both melting of the snow and the rainy seasonal rainfalls may contribute in occurring flooding in combination. Coastal Flooding Due to the severe tropical storms and heavy winds, the winds tend to carry away the ocean water in hevy amounts and thus occur of the coastal areas. In this situation, the sea level rises to the ground level and winds tend to produce waves more than the ground level and flooding occurs. Higher velocity winds create surface turbulence and thus the ocean wa ves present flooding of the coastal areas. The phenomenon is often recognized as storm surge. Coastal flooding is also due to the impact of Tsunamis, volcanic eruption and landslides in the oceans. Tsunamis are caused due to the earthquake which occurs in the ocean not very far from the coastal region. An under oceanic earthquake

Multinational company from UK enters the Russian market Case Study

Multinational company from UK enters the Russian market - Case Study Example A company's brand image and its strengths in the local market can be used to leverage its global strategy". When an organization like Volvo competes in the International market, it can use its power in the industry to its advantage because of its improved negotiating power among the suppliers, creditors, distributors and other stakeholder groups. When a multinational company from UK enters the Russian market, the factors that have to be taken into account in the macro environment are discussed in this essay. PEST analysis which provides a comprehensive idea about the various environmental factors has to be used. Hence, this essay focuses on the different factors from the external environment that have to be evaluated in order to create a strategy for exploiting the Russian markets. Though the company is successful in the various countries, the factors that influence the business environment in specific to Russia have to be focused. Hence, this report is presented for the perusal of the Board of Directors. 1. Transition economy: Russia is changing dynamically in every aspect of operations. Because of the opening of the economy, there are a huge number of opportunities created. It can be noted that Russian economy is in a boom and the global recession has not had a very disturbing effect on the economic growth of the country. Market implicatio Market implication - When new sectors are opened up and there is a huge increase in the demand for heavy vehicles and construction vehicles. The basic factor for the business development which is the demand for products is created. Strategic implication - Entering into the markets in Russia can benefit the stakeholders of the company. 2. Local government role - A reform introduced by the president of Russia stipulates that the regional heads are to be appointed based on the key success factors such as economic growth of the region, social stability and political loyalty. Hence, there is a competition among various regions to attract investment. The regions are creating Investment Promotional Agencies. Many Russian regions maintain websites in other languages and participate in international exhibitions to welcome investors. Market implication - these moves by the government shows that the Russian government is committed to boost foreign investment. Strategic implication - This will help in a more favorable climate and the business community can expect more reforms in the coming future which will be helpful in establishing business in the country. 3. Political stability - Russia is a former super power, trying very hard to maintain its global dominance. The economy is in the transition and there are a number of pitfalls in the administration. Foreign companies often complain that there are numerous administrative procedures and bureaucratic hurdles to start business, but the country has a stable political climate and the commitment to reform process has been confirmed strongly by the government measures. Strategic implication: though there is a politically stable climate, it is necessary to note that because of the war climate with Georgia, foreign investors were concerned and the stock markets were affected. Hence, the company has to keep in mind the political factors that may lead to economic downturns as stated here. 4. Government procedures: Often it is annoying for the international investors about the need for

The Problem of Evil Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Problem of Evil - Term Paper Example The â€Å"all-good,† the â€Å"all-powerful,† etc., are claims to justifying the creator who made the world of all possible worlds. Theodicy involves these traditional arguments and weighs these arguments against the scale of the problem of evil. G.W. Leibniz is a case in point. According to Leibniz, this world, no matter how imperfect, is actually the best of all possible worlds that God would have created in any way. More so, Leibniz’s optimistic theodicy does not see the existence of evil in the world as fundamentally counting against God’s existence. Therefore, evil, as it were, becomes a non-issue when seen from the purview of God’s grand plan of the universe. â€Å"Further, we realize that there is a perpetual and almost free progress of the whole universe in fulfillment of the universal beauty and perfection of the works of God, so that it is always advancing towards a greater development.† (1967, 421). Theodicy as the rational study o f God necessarily has to come to grips with evil, where the question is about justifying God’s goodness in the presence of evil. ... Does belief in God contribute to man’s pursuit of happiness, notwithstanding the other equally issue called evil? Or, is it something superfluous let alone erroneous? The presence of evil in the world is real, no doubt. But it has a purpose. The process of evolution forces us to admit to ourselves that we are not at the center of this cosmic process, and that what we need to do is to align ourselves to the ultimate end of the process. Teilhard de Chardin sees evil as part of the whole process of evolution from which man must learn to find his rightful place. De Chardin explains: â€Å"Statistically, at every degree of evolution, we find evil always and everywhere, forming and reforming implacably in us and around us.† (1975, 312). Similarly, an uncritical belief in an objectivist divine providence needs to give way to the reality of evil which God uses to teach man of his existence in the world. Divine providence is not magic. Evil is a privation of man’s suppose d end of goodness. In the end, human affairs need to be addressed by man, not God. â€Å"The evil in the world is very great and we see little or no reliable evidence of a benevolent providence,† (Cupitt 2001, 106). Leave God alone! Atheism easily dismisses God’s existence on account of the reality of evil, as if to falsify altogether God’s existence because of the perceived presence of something that goes against God’s attributes. For atheism God’s existence is nothing but man’s projection of his desire to get the help of some superpower to take away the problem of evil which he cannot do. From a theistic perspective, the objections of atheism can be adequately addressed - not apologetically, but

Name of student Essay Example for Free

Name of student Essay The siblings Rosa and Enrique cannot be strictly called emigrants or refugees because of the rather peculiar nature of their emigration. They are emigrants because they wish to have a better life far away from their village where they were peasant farmers. They possibly may be called refugees because they had to leave their village to spare their lives. For the sake of proper designation by the authorities, they could be called refugees as they are more that than just emigrants. . Their journey to the north was fraught with difficulties at every turn. At first they met with a coyote Jaime, who appeared to be kind to them and actually took them across the border only to try to rob them when he thought their guard was down. They were apprehended by the border authorities and were sent back to Tijuana where they failed to convince authorities that they were Mexicans. On getting to Tijuana, they had no source of income and Rosa had to resort to stealing in order to feed herself. Eventually they met the coyote who was able to take them to the US, they had to sell their mothers chain which probably was the last thing they had to remind them of her and symbolically they parted with the last thing that linked them with their village. To get to the US, they had to go through a sewer pipe that was rat infested in almost total darkness for hours on end that was a horrible experience. It was not all bad anyway, not long after they left their village they tried to stow inside a truck, and the friendly driver asked them to join him in front on the drive to Oaxaca. Besides, he gave them a crash course for being Mexicans or at least coming of as ones. That proved to be a very valuable lesson later on. They met one person who helped them to rent out an apartment when they got to California, and the same person presented Enrique a job offer in Chicago. At the same time, Rosa met a nice lady Nacha who helped her by giving advice and the basic notions about the life in the US as an undocumented immigrant. In order not to have great problems they began taking English classes and proved to be good students, they were hard orking and did not expect that anything could happen to them. This movie evokes sympathetic feelings to undocumented emigrants, having been given a behind the scenes look into their stories. Granted that all of them might not have such dramatic stories in their lives, it is worth noting that in spite of the legality or otherwise of their status under it all, they are just regular people with hopes dreams and aspirations who just purs ue a better life or who are actually running away from a real imminent threat to their lives. And this situation they find themselves in puts them in a very vulnerable state where they can be exploited and victimized by people who have real or imagined issues with their stay in the US. Watching this movie has softened my opinion of immigrants. They may not have the correct documentation, but they deserve a chance to improve their lives.

Nestle Marketing Practices in Africa

Nestle Marketing Practices in Africa The main aim of this assessment is much focused on the critiques and the strategies of the Nestle marketing practices in Africa in the past. The marketing strategies pursued by Nestle in markets in the developing Global Market are also analysed. The discussion towards the ethical concerns raised by these Marketing strategies. The Incorporative Study of the international ban and the evidence on compliance based on Nestle is been performed on a wide range of research with the influence of the reports available from various sources. The analysis of Consumer boycott towards Nestle products  and its impact over the past with relevance to the Africa incident. The study will also greatly focus towards the Nestle boycott- Nestle practices over the free samples to hospitals and kids in poor countries like Africa, we will also emphasize and analyse their critiques due to these practices. Objectives The main ailment of this assessment are been nailed towards the strategy study of the Consumer Boycott Nestle over the incident of Africa. The Global business strategy and the criticism of Nestle are been greatly focused through which we are able to analyse on a wider perspective for descripting the clear picture of various crisis. The progression of the research there by will be further discussed in order to provide a robust recommendation which may yield the marketing strategy aid the strength and prevent the ruin of various problems in the marketing practices on a general perspective. The conclusion will there by effectively hold a hand for providing the better influence of the better marketing strategy based on Nestle on a general perspective. Focus of Study The focus of this study are been greatly emphasized on the learning strategies towards the marketing practices of Nestle and also their implementation of new products in the underdeveloped and the developed country thus leading to the global strategy. The progression of the research there by will be further discussed in order to provide a robust recommendation which may yield the marketing strategy aid the strength and prevent the ruin of various problems in the marketing practices The study will emphasize the better marketing practices. the project guidelines, you will still be expected to demonstrate  knowledge and understanding of a wide range of economic and analytical skills that apply to the study of international business, and more specifically in your case, of theoretical marketing issues as they have been deployed in the Nestle Boycott case study. Brief Introduction and History of Nestle The Nestle has been established and founded in Switzerland around 1866 by Heinrich Nestle the base of the business was identity of the Milk food products. The major concentration of the business where been nailed towards the infants further they look forward and established their business in the developing countries. The Nestle has started their marketing practices in the Africa since late 1980s and Nestle have improved their marketing strategy and the promotion in to their practices of day to day life where they have tend to widen their opportunities in improvising their marketing strategy throughout the Africa. The Nestle concentration is completely been focused towards the Food products. The Nestle food manufacturing products include coffee and other dairy products. The Nestle established nearly 27 factories in and around Africa more over the 11500 employees have been engaged for the manufacturing unit, Nestle also included 50000 suppliers in to their integration of supply chain u nits. The food quality and the social improvements are the two main core principles of the Nestle in emphasizing their business and the marketing practices. The Promotion activity is the act which has experienced them in the Africa in making a improvement in the Baby milk powder over the Africa. The social frame work and the manufacturing of high quality products have been frame worked in Nestle principles. The developments are been much sustainable in Nestles case where the initiatives of their business practices have been expanded over the regions of Europe as well. The major initiatives of the Nestle have been implemented over the developed countries for better integration and the development of the business. The Nestle established the Milk districts wherever they have established their business ensuring their quality also concerning their Global strategy and the development of the business (Boycott Nestle, 2010). Examination of the marketing strategies pursued by Nestle in markets in the developing Global Market The Global strategy of the Nestle has been despite unsuccessful The Nestle had major failures in the Africa due to their promotional products of Nestle towards the Infants. The Nestle had faced major challenges in the 1990s due to major products which they launched and in efficient marketing strategies. The environment of the western nations has been increased with in a challenge around the Africa due to the large scale manufacturing on a supplier chain discounts and the promotional offers. The price valuation has been applied drastically on the several products of Nestle in making their successful products around the Europe and other developed markets. The competition exist around the African region for several products and in the regions of Europe this has really influenced the Nestle to compete the competitors in a high level so they have decided to op for the promotional strategy towards the infants products in Africa. [Source: Boycott Nestle and other action to protect infant health, (2010) [online] (cited 5th December 2010) Available from ] The Nestle has always focused on the Developing and the underdeveloped countries recently they have targeted the China and the India for making their business since the previous estimated population for the China on 2010 is 700 million and also targeting on the incoming levels they have been several opportunity to create in the large markets. The Nestle has Worldwide for several key brands The overall brands of the company has been reached over 8500 in that only few has been registered to business in those countries. The Nestle has established their network with the warehouses and they have wide spread the opportunity for more good supply with the developing markets. The marketing practices and the strategies of Nestle always faces the challenge in the African regions especially recently they have faced a major challenge in the Nigeria due to the polluted water and also on top of it they have the challenging hygienic conditions for their environment (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2008). The research and the development operation have been specialized with in the Nestle over the years since they have been specialized and concentrating more on commercializing their food stuffs and innovation has been touched everywhere in their marketing practices and in terms of their food products as well. The SBUs have been concerned with the managers and the region in terms of perceiving their long term development with respect to the projects and technology (Cowe and Roger, 1999). Brief Analysis and Discussion towards the ethical concerns raised by these Marketing strategies Nestle boycott- Nestle has made several practices in issuing the free samples to hospitals and the infants in the poor countries like Africa and the other regions of Africa ,The real intention of the issuing with the free samples is to promote their products based on which they want the customers to get habituated with the products so that they will have a good business over the regions with the infants and other products. In some cases the people have been influenced and often forced to consume the products. In some cases they have been sold the products out of compulsion for the infants. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The Nestle has done these promotional practices of infant products often nestle milk powder this was been the key measure for the Nestle in leading to further disaster.The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing th e further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market though Nestle should have considered themselves to make the effective ease of marketing practices for the better improvement of their business with the infant products.The failure in instructing the people with the sanitation methods for preparing the bottles was also being a major reason in death of many infants and leading to the criticism. There are several people who are unaware with the exact method of the steps in preparing the milk using the Milk product from nestle as the failure in providing the preparation procedures were not given in the regional languages. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The progression of the research there by will be further discussed in order to provide a robust recommendation which may yield the marketing strategy. The thorough critique of Nestlà ©s marketing strategy for baby milk powder in the developing world.  This marketing strategy of nestle indeed faced many criticisms and ethical concerns as a serious concern and the regular addressing of these issues in Africa and other regions the Nestle has been prolonged with a Ban on the infant products and other major goods supply. The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing the further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market, based on Nestle- boycott (Rapoport, 1994).    Incorporative Study of the international ban and the evidence on compliance based on Nestle The major evidence of compliance has been addressed in Africa due to the marketing practices of the milk powder issued in the Africa. The Africa being a underdeveloped and known for its poverty, Nestle have concentrated on the Infant milk products where they have addressed the parents having less breastfeeding habits more over they have not having sufficient nutrition for their infants hence they have promoted the milk products which will give the nutrition for the infants based on regular usage. The people are not aware about the ratio on which they need to mix the infant milk products although hey have promoted the products on behalf of Nestle they have failed to instruct the people as they have been known as the illiterates un aware of the usage towards the milk products though they have been instruction available in English. The actual scenario of the Nestle Milk powder is that needed to be mixed in water the worst case of the Africa is that they fail to have the availability of pure water rather they have the contaminated water all around including the ground water. This is very common that the poor countries often have the failures in the clean water supply and also availability of the non-adulterated food (Sillivan, 1998). The milk product from the Nestle has been feeded to the infants has been practiced with the contaminated water although the milk also become contaminated further been consumed by the infants where they have been severely affected with many incurable diseases and often leading to death etc. The children who has consumed it has been leaded towards the serious diseases. This marketing strategy of nestle indeed faced many criticisms and ethical concerns as a serious concern and the regular addressing of these issues in Africa and other regions the Nestle has been prolonged with a Ban on the infant products and other major goods supply. The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing the further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market The failure in instructing the people with the sanitation methods for preparing the bottles was also being a major reason in death of many infants and leading to the criticism. The many mothers are also un-aware with the exact method of the steps in preparing the milk using the Milk product from nestle as the failure in providing the preparation procedures were not given in the regional languages. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The Nestle has done these promotional practices of infant products only with the hospital for a free basis. Once they have decided to leave the hospital the issuing of milk powder were been stopped to provide free whereas on the other hand the supplements has been already started working with the children the family continues to buy the formula again this has been a reason for heavy Un ethical practices of nestle or even termed to be the un ethical strategy of nestle. The IBFAN accused nestle for offering the sponsorships and gifts to the health workers for promoting the nestle milk powder (Monroe, 1999). Analysis of Consumer boycott towards Nestle products  and its impact After the incident of the Nestle Boycott Incident in the Africa based on the Milk powder they have finally met their protestors since they have decided to modify their business practices in four main perspectives. The restriction were included with the distribution of the free samples. The Nestle labels were been identified and being the benefit of the breastfeeding and later they have been the emphasized for the bottle feeding. The promises of the hospitals and relevance towards their product and code were aided with the codes of world health organization (WHO). The infant formulaes were been agreed to promote in the markets based on the professionals with proper training and related to the terms of policy in the specified environment. the Infant milk products where they have addressed the parents having less breastfeeding habits more over they have not having sufficient nutrition for their infants hence they have promoted the milk products which will give the nutrition for the infa nts based on regular usage. The people are not aware about the ratio on which they need to mix the infant milk products although they have promoted the products on behalf of Nestle they have failed to instruct the people as they have been known as the illiterates un aware of the usage towards the milk products though they have been instruction available in English. The actual scenario of the Nestle Milk powder is that needed to be mixed in water the worst case of the Africa is that they fail to have the availability of pure water rather they have the contaminated water all around including the ground water. This is very common that the poor countries often have the failures in the clean water supply and also availability of the non-adulterated food (Kline, 2005). The milk product from the Nestle has been feeded to the infants has been practiced with the contaminated water although the milk also become contaminated further been consumed by the infants where they have been severely affected with many incurable diseases and often leading to death etc. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The Nestle has done these promotional practices of infant products. The children who has consumed it has been leaded towards the serious diseases. This marketing strategy of nestle indeed faced many criticisms and ethical concerns as a serious concern and the regular addressing of these issues in Africa and other regions the Nestle has been prolonged with a Ban on the infant products and other major goods supply. The failure in instructing the people with the sanitation methods for preparing the bottles was also being a major reason in death of many infants and leading to the criticism. The many mothers are also un-aware with the exact method of the steps in preparing the milk using the Milk product from nestle as the failure in providing the preparation procedures were not given in the regional languages (Kline, 2005). The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing the further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market. The Breast feeding is often being known to be the safest way in order to build the strength and aid the infants with the essential nutrients, it is the best way for proving the nutrition where it aids the protection them from bacteria and other infection. This has been an often crucial stage emphasizing their development. The well replacement known method for the replacement with the bottle feeding more over they tend to carry in engaging the greater risks over the contaminated water practiced for the infants towards feeding and risk of avoiding the sterilizing equipment. The breast milk often known as the substitutes and same kind of products which includes fruit juices. The infant cereals being a major promotion with advertisements in order to attract the infants (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2008).   Recommendation The IBFAN has decided to Ban Nestle for their irrelevant marketing strategies this kind of strategies and more authority should be concerned for monitoring the kind of activities ensuring the health and safety. The well trained professions are needed to be trained in an effective manner is much crucial for emphasizing the best of marketing strategies ensuring the safety for the people and also improvising the sales of the products in the market. The Nestle Boycott has often being engaged in the promotion activity with the hospitals, more often the promotion should be based on the peoples interest and also based on their training basis so that many issues can be highly prevented. The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing the further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market. The failure in instructing the people with the sanitation methods for preparing the bottles was also being a major reason in death of many infants and leadin g to the criticism. The Milk product from nestle as the failure in providing the preparation procedures were not given in the regional languages. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The yield of the marketing strategy aid the strength and prevent the ruin of various problems in the marketing practices Alternatively after all the bans they have been more successful understanding the nature of the place and condition. Conclusion In order to conclude as we have discussed the marketing strategies and the business practices of Nestle has been under several issues addressed though they have been initialized with their marketing plans. The marketing practices of Nestle and also their implementation of new products in the underdeveloped and the developed country thus leading to the global strategy. The IBFAN accused nestle for offering the sponsorships and gifts to the health workers for promoting the nestle milk powder this was been the key measure for the Nestle in leading to further disaster.The campaigns were conducted against nestle for preventing the further promotion and to stop delivering the marketing practices of Nestle in the market though Nestle should have considered themselves to make the effective ease of marketing practices for the better improvement of their business with the infant products.The failure in instructing the people with the sanitation methods for preparing the bottles was also being a major reason in death of many infants and leading to the criticism. There are several people who are unaware with the exact method of the steps in preparing the milk using the Milk product from nestle as the failure in providing the preparation procedures were not given in the regional languages. The IBFAN criticized nestle for distributing the free samples of milk powder to hospitals and maternity wards in many countries like Africa and other developing countries. The progression of the research there by will be further discussed in order to provide a robust recommendation which may yield the marketing strategy aid the strength and prevent the ruin of various problems in the marketing practices Alternatively after all the bans they have been more successful understanding the nature of the place and condition for which they have been adapted in promotion and manufacturing of the products based on the requirements.

Essay --

â€Å"Everybody on Earth can ask, ‘Why me?’ about something or other. It doesn’t do any good. No one is immune to heart-ache, pain, and disappointments. Sometimes we can make things better by helping other people. I’ve come to realize the importance of that †¦ I want to speak out and be as helpful as I can be†(Miller). This quote was said by Mary Tyler Moore. Mary Tyler Moore is a celebrity that was made famous for her various television roles in the 1960s and the 1970s. Throughout her life, she has been able to overcome an abundant amount of adversities. Some of these adversities include divorces, the death of her own son, alcoholism, miscarriage, and diabetes. Her life has been one of much grief, struggling, and heart-ache. Although Mary Tyler Moore has been forced to overcome many life-changing adversities throughout her life, she is still living her life today to help others overcome the struggles of some of the same problems that she has de alt with herself. Mary Tyler Moore was born on December 29, 1936 in Brooklyn Heights, New York (Wohl). Her relationship with her parents was not a very loving nor caring one. In Mary’s book, After All, she describes the type of people that her mother and father were at that time. She illustrates her father as somewhat of a remote person in her life, calling him a â€Å"sullen† and â€Å"off-putting father.† Although her father was a great story teller and other children loved that about him, he could have cared less for their affection (Moore 8-9). However, the children still adored him and Mary says that the reason being was that they had fathers who held them and told them they were pretty. Her father never did that to her, so she saw him a little differently (Moore 8-9). Mary Tyler Moore’s relationshi... ...ss and to address and improve its course for others and myself,† (A Relentless Illness). Mary Tyler Moore is truly a remarkably strong woman. She has faced so many trials throughout her lifetime. Having the ability to overcome and defeat all of her adversities has made her one of many heroes for an incredulous number of people today. Looking ahead and never forgetting the past that made her who she is now, Mary now fills her life with things like the joy of living, reading, being creative, and knowing that she is doing the right thing (MTM on Dealing). Now, instead of being regretful about things that happened to her, she looks back and appreciates all of the happenings that have shaped her into who she is now. Of her life overall, Mary says that there have been a few blips along the way. However, she says, â€Å"I must say, I did a remarkable job of it,† (Marcus).

Value of Teamwork Essay -- Service Teams

As with all of life, there are two basic approaches to business: First, one can decide to set out on his own to make his fortune and second one can develop and build a team to get the job done. There is a simple, yet powerful, acronym to help one remember the importance of teamwork; (TEAM) Together Everyone Achieves More. There are those who, in this age of bureaucracy and â€Å"red tape,† might feel as though being part of a group means giving up control of their projects – leaving them feeling a little like they would have been better off without team membership. Inevitably, however, one comes to the realization that he cannot survive alone as â€Å"no man is an island.† These individuals soon are left to consider that the concept of a team effort producing exponential results has led to farmers yoking together â€Å"teams† of oxen and horses, has led to ever increasing amounts of â€Å"horsepower† in mechanical engines, and so is nothing new. Wit h the idea of being able to take on otherwise insurmountable tasks, there is definitely something to be said about the pride of accomplishment that can only come through the efforts of teamwork. While the general concept of teams and teamwork remain unchanged, the purpose and makeup of teams has changed, rather than a group of employees in a room getting together the 21st century teams are becoming more frequently geographically dispersed teams (GDT) that are required to work from very diverse locations within the country and even around the globe (Sole & Edmondson, 2002). Of course, as with any team or organization intent on actually accomplishing anything there needs to be a map or direction, this is usually found in the Mission and Vision statements†¦ but then even if you are on the right track, the tr... ...y. When these values, norms and guidelines are followed, the team will become an efficient and successful one. The process may be slow in the beginning, but once the team understands and cooperates with each other, anything can be achieved. Every team member should become committed to the success of the team and not worry about individual pain or difficulties. If these norms and guidelines are put into practice, any amount of work becomes an easy task. â€Å"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevails against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.† – Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12.

My life :: essays research papers

Secrets (Free writing) There are a few things in the back of anybody’s memory that have been repressed from childhood, and just emerge onto our consciousness once in the blue moon by accident or triggered by a random event. I have a very vivid memory of my childhood, associated with a particular smell, related to a family secret. I was about 8 years old, the youngest and only boy in a family of four siblings. Our house was always crowded with female cousins and aunts staying over, gossiping around, from which I was kept out of â€Å"Girls talk†. My closest friend was my youngest sister, who was just 2 years older than I. She kept her distance from me in public, because in those days girls and boys where meant to play and stay away from each other. Just in the intimacy of the family’s common bedroom she was tender and comprehensive; she taught me how to pray at night; how to make my bed; how to brush my teeth and to how stay away from the night spittoons. Anytime I felt in trouble, I just looked up to her, and she would tell me silently with a wink or any facial gesture what to do. Leonidas De Los santos 2 One night, I was awakened in the middle of the dark by guardian-sister. There were screams and rumble in the immense density of the night. I was scared and concerned, curious rather than startled. My guardian-sister put her hand on my mouth, and I felt her warm morning breath telling me to hush. For a moment, a minute or so, we stood motionless next to the bed, trying to X Ray the darkness, and to radar with our ears the faintest sound. Then I heard it, a flush of air escaping furiously someone’s nostrils like a bull before it charges, a humming of a cry mufflered, like somebody screaming under tons of dirt. I was reviewing with mental flashes scary bed time stories I ever heard, trying to match the sounds I was hearing with the mythological beasts I had imagined in my mind. Then I heard a splash, and a urine-like liquid soaked my feet. It was warm and sticky; it had a scent like nothing I had ever perceived in my life. It smelled, like, like jackfruit, Clorox and soap togethe r. I do not remember quite right how that night ended, I just remember that smell. My life :: essays research papers Secrets (Free writing) There are a few things in the back of anybody’s memory that have been repressed from childhood, and just emerge onto our consciousness once in the blue moon by accident or triggered by a random event. I have a very vivid memory of my childhood, associated with a particular smell, related to a family secret. I was about 8 years old, the youngest and only boy in a family of four siblings. Our house was always crowded with female cousins and aunts staying over, gossiping around, from which I was kept out of â€Å"Girls talk†. My closest friend was my youngest sister, who was just 2 years older than I. She kept her distance from me in public, because in those days girls and boys where meant to play and stay away from each other. Just in the intimacy of the family’s common bedroom she was tender and comprehensive; she taught me how to pray at night; how to make my bed; how to brush my teeth and to how stay away from the night spittoons. Anytime I felt in trouble, I just looked up to her, and she would tell me silently with a wink or any facial gesture what to do. Leonidas De Los santos 2 One night, I was awakened in the middle of the dark by guardian-sister. There were screams and rumble in the immense density of the night. I was scared and concerned, curious rather than startled. My guardian-sister put her hand on my mouth, and I felt her warm morning breath telling me to hush. For a moment, a minute or so, we stood motionless next to the bed, trying to X Ray the darkness, and to radar with our ears the faintest sound. Then I heard it, a flush of air escaping furiously someone’s nostrils like a bull before it charges, a humming of a cry mufflered, like somebody screaming under tons of dirt. I was reviewing with mental flashes scary bed time stories I ever heard, trying to match the sounds I was hearing with the mythological beasts I had imagined in my mind. Then I heard a splash, and a urine-like liquid soaked my feet. It was warm and sticky; it had a scent like nothing I had ever perceived in my life. It smelled, like, like jackfruit, Clorox and soap togethe r. I do not remember quite right how that night ended, I just remember that smell.