Thursday, March 19, 2020

Free Essays on The Handmaids Tale

Offred and Sir Gawain A hero is a person honored for his/her achievement of courage and nobility, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. Offred from the The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and Gawain from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, by Anonymous are the protagonists in these works of literature who are admired for their good qualities. Offred and Sir Gawain show some traits of bravery. However neither Offred nor Sir Gawain did anything extremely brave, nor do they achieve anything great. These characters reveal qualities of fear, pride, selfishness, and when faced with the situation of death, act like any other ordinary human being, which means they cannot be honored as heroes. When the president was killed, the government suspended the constitution. â€Å"There wasn’t even rioting in the streets† (Atwood 172). Offred did nothing to even try to stop these events from occurring. Society began falling apart. Offred had her accounts suspended and lost her job. Offred did nothing to stop or even prevent this because she feared society. â€Å"Nobody wanted to be reported for disloyalty† (Atwood 180). There is no doubt that it would have been hard or even impossible to prevent these acts of oppression and persecution. A real hero would have at least tried and would have laid everything on the line even their life to accomplish their goal or cause. Offred instead of fighting tries to escape from Gilead, which means she tried to run away from her problems and her life. That is why Offred is not considered a hero but just another victim of persecution. Offred did try to rebel against the society and its rules in her own subtle ways, but nothing that actually made a difference. She sneaks out at night to walk around the hallways, which is against the rules and she also takes a withered daffodil. â€Å"What should I take? Something that will not be missed† (Atwood 98). Offred is scared and ... Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale Offred and Sir Gawain A hero is a person honored for his/her achievement of courage and nobility, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. Offred from the The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and Gawain from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, by Anonymous are the protagonists in these works of literature who are admired for their good qualities. Offred and Sir Gawain show some traits of bravery. However neither Offred nor Sir Gawain did anything extremely brave, nor do they achieve anything great. These characters reveal qualities of fear, pride, selfishness, and when faced with the situation of death, act like any other ordinary human being, which means they cannot be honored as heroes. When the president was killed, the government suspended the constitution. â€Å"There wasn’t even rioting in the streets† (Atwood 172). Offred did nothing to even try to stop these events from occurring. Society began falling apart. Offred had her accounts suspended and lost her job. Offred did nothing to stop or even prevent this because she feared society. â€Å"Nobody wanted to be reported for disloyalty† (Atwood 180). There is no doubt that it would have been hard or even impossible to prevent these acts of oppression and persecution. A real hero would have at least tried and would have laid everything on the line even their life to accomplish their goal or cause. Offred instead of fighting tries to escape from Gilead, which means she tried to run away from her problems and her life. That is why Offred is not considered a hero but just another victim of persecution. Offred did try to rebel against the society and its rules in her own subtle ways, but nothing that actually made a difference. She sneaks out at night to walk around the hallways, which is against the rules and she also takes a withered daffodil. â€Å"What should I take? Something that will not be missed† (Atwood 98). Offred is scared and ... Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale In her novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses the concept of different expression of romantic love through the eyes of Offred, a woman who has lost almost all her freedom to a repressive, dystopic society. Throughout her struggle against oppression and guilt, Offred's view evolves, and it is through this process that Atwood demonstrates the nature of love as it develops under the most austere of circumstances. The first glimses of romantic love one notes in this novel are the slivers of Offred's memeories of Luke, her husband from whom she has been separated. For the most part they are sense memoriesshe recalls most of all images of comfort: of lying in her husband's arms, of his scent, and of little details of his appearancebut also a sense of connectedness that gives her identity. And it is this that she misses the most. "I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable" (125-126). And yet already the person as a whole is beginning to slip away. The life she is leading now is driving him from her realityshe says, "Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless" (346). Her love for her husband is marked with guilt and regret even in the beginningshe misses all the little characteristics about him that she never took time to appreciate when she was with him. She even misses the arg uments, and wonders, "How were we to know we were happy?" (67). The memory of her love for Luke, and her guilt at betraying him with other men, especially Nick, for whom she develops genuine affection, is a significant psychological factor throughout the course of the novel. Foreshadowing the fact that she will turn from her memories to the tangible comforts of a living man, she says of her unhappy predicament: "But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. There's nobody here I can love, all th...

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1965 to 1969

Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1965 to 1969 This civil rights movement timeline focuses on the struggles final years when some activists embraced black power, and leaders no longer appealed to the federal government to end segregation, thanks to the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although the passage of such legislation was a major triumph for civil rights activists, Northern cities continued to suffer from de facto segregation, or segregation that was the result of economic inequality rather than discriminatory laws. De facto segregation was not as easily addressed as the legalized segregation that had existed in the South, and Martin Luther King  Jr. spent the mid-to-late 1960s working on behalf of both black and white Americans living in poverty. African-Americans  in Northern cities became increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of change, and a number of cities experienced riots. Some turned to the black power movement, feeling that it had a better chance of rectifying the sort of discrimination that existed in the North. By the end of the decade, white Americans had moved their attention away from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War, and the heady days of change and victory experienced by civil rights activists in the early 1960s came to an end with Kings assassination  in 1968. 1965 On Feb. 21, Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem at the Audubon Ballroom apparently by Nation of Islam  operatives, although other theories abound.On March 7, 600 civil rights activists, including Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), leave Selma, Ala., traveling eastward on Route 80 toward Montgomery, Ala. They are marching to protest the killing of Jimmy Lee Jackson, an unarmed demonstrator slain during a march the prior month by an Alabama state trooper. State troopers and local police stop the marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, beating them with clubs as well as spraying them with water hoses and tear gas.On March 9, King leads a march to the Pettus bridge, turning the marchers around at the bridge.On March 21, 3,000 marchers leave Selma for Montgomery, completing the march without opposition.On March 25, around 25,000 people join the Selma marchers at the Montgomery city l imits. On Aug. 6, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, which bans discriminatory voting requirements, like requiring people to complete literacy tests before they registered to vote. White Southerners had used this technique to disenfranchise blacks.On Aug. 11, a riot breaks out in Watts, a section of Los Angeles, after a fight erupts between a white traffic officer and a black man accused of drinking and driving. The officer arrests the man and some of his family members who had arrived at the scene. Rumors of police brutality, however, result in six days of rioting in Watts. Thirty-four people, mostly African Americans, die during the riot. 1966 On Jan. 6, SNCC announces its opposition to the Vietnam War. SNCC members would feel increasing sympathy for the Vietnamese, comparing the indiscriminate bombing of Vietnam to racial violence in the United States.On Jan. 26, King moves into an apartment in a Chicago slum, announcing his intention to start a campaign against discrimination there. This in response to the increasing unrest in Northern cities over prejudice and de facto segregation. His efforts there are ultimately deemed unsuccessful.On June 6, James Meredith embarks on a March Against Fear from Memphis, Tenn., to Jackson, Miss., to encourage black Mississippians to register to vote. Near Hernando, Miss., Meredith is shot. Others take up the march, joined on occasion by King.On June 26, the marchers reach Jackson. During the last days of the march, Stokely Carmichael and other SNCC members clash with King after they encourage the frustrated marchers to embrace the slogan of black power.On Oct. 15, Huey P. Newton and Bob by Seale found the Black Panther Party in Oakland, Calif. They want to create a new political organization to better the conditions of African Americans. Their goals include better employment and educational opportunities as well as improved housing. 1967 On April 4, King makes a speech against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in New York.On June 12, the Supreme Court hands down a decision in Loving v. Virginia, overturning laws against interracial marriage as unconstitutional.In July, riots break out in Northern cities, including Buffalo, N.Y., Detroit, Mich. and Newark, N.J.On Sept. 1, Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.On Nov. 7, Cal Stokes is elected mayor of Cleveland, making him the first African American to serve as mayor of a major American city.In November, King announces the Poor Peoples Campaign, a movement to unite the poor and disenfranchised of America, regardless of race or religion. 1968 On April 11,  President Johnson  signs  the Civil Rights Act of 1968  (or the Fair Housing Act) into law, which prohibits discrimination by sellers or renters of property.Exactly a week earlier,  Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated  as he stands on the balcony outside his motel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. King visited the city to support  African American sanitation workers there whod started a strike on Feb. 11.Between February and May, African American students protest at major universities, including Columbia University and Howard University, demanding changes in faculty, living arrangements, and curriculum.Between May 14 and June 24, over 2500 impoverished Americans set up a camp called Resurrection City in Washington, D.C., under the leadership of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who is trying to carry out Kings vision. The protest ends in riots and arrests without the strong leadership of King. 1969 Between April and May, African American students hold protests at universities, including Cornell University and North Carolina A T University in Greensboro, asking for changes such as a Black Studies program and the hiring of African American faculty.On Dec. 4, Fred Hampton, chairman of the  Illinois Black Panther party, is shot and killed by police during a raid. A federal grand jury refutes the polices assertion that they fired upon Hampton only in self-defense, but no one is ever indicted for Hamptons killing.