Slavery and Identity Among the Cherokee

Slavery and Identity Among the Cherokee The institution of slavery in the United States long pre-dates the African slave trade. But by the late 1700’s the practice of slaveholding by southern Indian nations- the Cherokee in particular- had taken hold as their interactions with Euro-Americans increased. Today’s Cherokee still grapple with the troubling legacy of slavery in their nation with the Freedman dispute. Scholarship on slavery in the Cherokee nation typically focuses on analyzing the circumstances that help to explain it, often describing a less brutal form of slavery (an idea some scholars debate). Nevertheless, the practice of African slaveholding forever changed the way Cherokees view race which they continue to reconcile today. The Roots of Slavery in the Cherokee Nation The slave trade on US soil has its roots in the arrival of the first Europeans who developed an extensive transatlantic business in the trafficking of Indians. Indian slavery would last well into the mid-to-late 1700s before it was outlawed, by which time the African slave trade was well established. Until that time, the Cherokee had a long history of being subject to capture and then exported to foreign lands as slaves. But while the Cherokee, like many Indian tribes who also had histories of inter-tribal raiding which sometimes included the taking of captives who could be killed, traded, or eventually adopted into the tribe, the continual incursion of European immigrants into their lands would expose them to foreign ideas of racial hierarchies that reinforced the idea of black inferiority. In 1730 a dubious delegation of Cherokee signed a treaty with the British (the Treaty of Dover) committing them to return runaway slaves (for which they would be rewarded), the first â€Å"official† act of complicity in the African slave trade. However, an apparent sense of ambivalence toward the treaty would manifest among the Cherokee who sometimes aided runaways, kept them for themselves, or adopted them. Scholars like Tiya Miles note that Cherokees valued slaves not just for their labor, but also for their intellectual skills like their knowledge of English and Euro-American customs, and sometimes married them. Influence of Euro-American Slavery One significant influence on the Cherokee to adopt slavery came at the behest of the United States government. After the Americans’ defeat of the British (with whom the Cherokee sided), the Cherokee signed the Treaty of Holston in 1791 which called for Cherokee to adopt a sedentary farming and ranching-based life, with the US agreeing to supply them with the â€Å"implements of husbandry.† The idea was in keeping with George Washington’s desire to assimilate Indians into white culture rather than exterminate them, but inherent in this new way of life, particularly in the South, was the practice of slaveholding. In general, slaveholding in the Cherokee nation was limited to a wealthy minority of mixed-blood Euro-Cherokees (although some full blood Cherokees did own slaves). Records indicate that the proportion of Cherokee slave owners was slightly higher than white southerners, 7.4% and 5% respectively. Oral history narratives from the 1930s indicate that slaves were often treated with greater mercy by Cherokee slave owners. This is reinforced by the records of an early Indian agent of the US government who, after advising that the Cherokee take up slave owning in 1796 as part of their â€Å"civilizing† process, found them to be lacking in their ability to work their slaves hard enough. Other records, on the other hand, reveal that Cherokee slave owners could be just as brutal as their white southern counterparts. Slavery in any form was resisted, but the cruelty of Cherokee slave owners like the notorious Joseph Vann would contribute to uprisings like the Cherokee Slave Revolt of 184 2. Complicated Relations and Identities The history of Cherokee slavery points to the ways relationships between slaves and their Cherokee owners were not always clear cut relationships of domination and subjugation. The Cherokee, like the Seminole, Chickasaw, Creek and Choctaw came to be known as the â€Å"Five Civilized Tribes† because of their willingness to adopt the ways of white culture (like slavery). Motivated by the effort to protect their lands, only to be betrayed with their forced removal by the US government, removal subjected African slaves of the Cherokee to the additional trauma of yet another dislocation. Those who were the product of mixed parentage would straddle a complex and fine line between an identity of Indian or black which could mean the difference between freedom and bondage. But even freedom would mean persecution of the type experienced by Indians who were losing their lands and cultures, coupled with the social stigma of being â€Å"mulatto.† The story of the Cherokee warrior and slave owner Shoe Boots and his family exemplifies these struggles. Shoe Boots, a prosperous Cherokee landowner, acquired a slave named Dolly around the turn of the 18th century, with whom he had an intimate relationship and three children. Because the children were born to a slave and children by white law followed the condition of the mother, the children were considered slaves until Shoe Boots was able to have them emancipated by the Cherokee nation. After his death, however, they would later be captured and forced into servitude, and even after a sister was able to secure their freedom, they would experience further disruption when they along with thousands of other Cherokees would be pushed out of their country on the Trail of Tears. The descendants of Shoe Boots would find themselves at the crossroads of identity not only as Freedman denied the benefits of citizenship in the Cherokee nation, but as people who have at times denied their black ness in favor of their Indianness. Sources Miles, Tiya. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.Miles, Tiya. â€Å"The Narrative of Nancy, A Cherokee Woman.† Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Vol. 29, Nos. 2 3., pp. 59-80.Naylor, Celia. African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

A Biographical Profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson

A Biographical Profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most popular and prolific science communicators of the early twenty-first century. Neil deGrasse Tyson Biographical Information Birth Date: October 5, 1958 Birthplace: New York, NY, USA (Born in Manhattan, raised in Bronx) Ethnicity: African-American/Puerto Rican Educational Background Neil deGrasse Tyson developed an interest in astronomy at age 9. While attending the Bronx High School of Science, Tyson was editor-in-chief of the schools Physical Science Journal. He was giving lectures on astronomy at the age of fifteen, foreshadowing a career in science communication. When he looked for a college, he came to the attention of Carl Sagan at Cornell University, and Sagan proved to be something of a mentor to him, despite the fact that he ultimately chose to attend Harvard. He has earned the following degrees: 1980 - B.A. physics, Harvard University1983 - M.A. astronomy, University of Texas at Austin1989 - Ph.M. astrophysics, Columbia University1991 - Ph.D. astrophysics, Columbia University He has since earned a number of honorary degrees. Non-Scientific Extracurricular Pursuits Awards Tyson was captain of his high school wrestling team. Despite some time during his freshman year at Harvard on the crew team (rowing, for those of us who didnt attend ivy league colleges), Tyson returned to wrestling and lettered in the sport during his senior year at Harvard. He was also an avid dancer and in 1985 earned an International Latin Ballroom Style gold medal with the University of Texas dance team. In 2000, Dr. Tyson was named the Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive by People Magazine (begging the question of which non-living astrophysicists may have beaten him). Though this is technically an award that he got because he was an astrophysicist, since the award itself is for a non-scientific achievement (his raw sexiness), weve decided to classify it here rather than with his academic achievements. Though related to his scientific views, Tyson has been categorized as an atheist because he advocates that religion has no place in influencing scientific questions and debates. He has, however, argued that if he must be classified, he believes that his stance is better categorized as agnosticism than atheism, since he claims no definitive position on the existence or non-existence of God. He did, however, receive the 2009 Isaac Asimov Science Award from the American Humanist Association. Academic Research Related Achievements Neil deGrasse Tysons research is largely in the realm of astrophysics and cosmology, with an emphasis in areas of stellar and galactic formation and evolution. This research, as well as his work as an avid science communicator with a wide range of popular science publications, helped position him for a position as director the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dr. Tyson has received a number of awards and honors, including the following: 2001 - Appointed by President George W. Bush to Commission on the Future of the United Aerospace Industry2001 - The Tech 100 (Crains Magazines list of 100 most influential technology leaders in New York)2001 - Medal of Excellence, Columbia University, New York City2004 - Appointed by President George W. Bush to Presidents Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy2004 - NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal2004 - Fifty Most Important African-Americans in Research Science2007 - Klopsteg Memorial Award winner2007 - Time 100 (Time Magazines list of 100 most influential persons in the world)2008 - 50 Best Brains in Science (Discover Magazine)2009 - Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach award Plutos Demotion The Rose Center for Earth and Space Science re-classified Pluto as an icy comet in XXXX, sparking a media firestorm. The man behind this decision was Neil deGrasse Tyson himself, the director of the Rose Center, though he was not acting alone. The debate got so intense that it had to be resolved by a vote at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) at their 2006 General Assembly, which decided Pluto was not a planet, but was actually a dwarf planet. (Not, it should be noted, the icy comet classification that the Rose Center originally used.) Tysons involvement in the debate was the basis for this 2010 book The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of Americas Favorite Planet, which focuses not only on the science related to the debate, but also considerations about the publics perceptions of Pluto. Popular Books Merlins Tour of the Universe (1989) - Tysons first book was a collection of question/answer pieces from the popular astronomy magazine Star Date. It is told through the narrative tool of being answered by Merlin, an alien visitor to Earth from Planet Omniscia, who has spent much time on Earth and been friends with many of Earths greatest scientists throughout history, such as Johannes Kepler and Albert Einstein.Universe Down to Earth (1994) - A popular book intended to introduce non-science audiences to the current science of astrophysics. While of historical interest, it should be noted that in 1994 there was no evidence of dark energy, so our understanding of the universe has transformed substantially since that time, so a more recent volume is suggested to get a modern introduction.Just Visiting This Planet (1998) - This is follow-up volume to Merlins Tour of the Universe, with additional question/answer pieces from Star Date magazine.One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos (2000) - C o-authored with Charles Tsun-Chu Liu and Robert Iroion, this book again tries to explain key astrophysics concepts, but has the added benefit of being a beautiful volume containing many photographs. At the time of this writing, however, this book appears to be out of print and largely unavailable, but there are no shortage of more recent books that cover this material and offer pictures from Hubble and other space telescopes. Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge (2000) - Co-edited with Steven Soter, this again is an illustrated book that attempts to explain the key features of modern astrophysics.City of Stars: A New Yorkers Guide to the Cosmos (2002) - The title is interesting, but this book also appears to be out of print, and finding information on it is even less forthcoming.My Favorite Universe (2003) - Based on Dr. Tysons 12-part lecture series of the same name through The Great Courses video lecture series.Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (2004) - Co-authored with Donald Goldsmith, this is a companion volume to his four-part Origins miniseries for PBS Nova series, focusing on the current state of cosmology.The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (2004) - This is an engaging memoir of Neil deGrasse Tysons life, and how his early interest in the night sky eventually led him to become an astrophysicist. Insights are offered into various challenges h e faced, including the racial challenges of being a minority physicist, making this a memoir that is worthwhile and educational on a number of different levels. Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries (2007) - This is a collection of several of Dr. Tysons most popular articles.The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of Americas Favorite Planet (2010) - In this book, Dr. Tyson discusses some of the key scientific and non-scientific elements of the debate over Plutos controversial demotion from a planet classification to one of dwarf planet.Space Chronicles (2014) - In this collection of essays, Dr. Tyson muses on the past, present, and future of the space program. Specifically focusing on the program in the United States, he outlines a vision for largely unmanned space exploration that can yield positive scientific results at significantly reduced costs and risk to human life. He also goes into some depth in the discussion of the economics and motivation at work in the history of the space program, and the challenges that future achievements would have to overcome. Television Other Media Neil deGrasse Tyson has been a guest on so many media sources that it would be virtually impossible to list them all. Since he lives in New York City, hes frequently a go-to science expert for a variety of shows, including appearances in morning shows for major networks. Below are some of his most noteworthy media appearances: Dr. Tyson has repeatedly appeared on both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report for Comedy Central. On one such appearance, he told Jon Stewart that the globe in the background of his television studio is actually rotating the wrong direction.Video clips of Dr. Tyson from The Daily Show with Jon StewartVideo clips of Dr. Tyson from The Colbert ReportStarTalk Radio Podcast - Dr. Tyson hosts a podcast through the Hayden Planetarium, called StarTalk, where he discusses various science topics, interviews interesting guests, and answers assorted questions from his audience. A video edition of the podcast is also available through YouTube.Nova ScienceNOW - Dr. Tyson was the host of the PBS series Nova ScienceNOW from 2006 through 2011 (seasons 2 through 5), introducing the various segments and then wrapping things up at the end of the episode, often sporting a stylish space-themed vest.Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey - Fox is bringing back the science mini-series Cosmos, in 2 014, and Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to be the narrator. Created with Carl Sagans widow Ann Druyan (who was instrumental in the first Cosmos as well) and animator Seth McFarlane, the show is slated to begin airing episodes on March 9, 2014, on both Fox and the National Geographic Channel. Edited by Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.

When should we trust our senses to give us truth Essay

When should we trust our senses to give us truth - Essay Example The hurdles are aplenty but the need is to remain steadfast so that truth could be discerned in the least possible time. The resources available at our disposal for finding out this truth are significant since these are the primary actors which play a quintessential role at making us understand what the truth is, if at all, we can come to know what it is, in the first place. Trusting our senses for gaining the ultimate truth that we seek is like trying to understand the very notion related with the ascertainment of truth. It is a difficult process to find out what actually goes behind the scenes as far as the truth building mechanisms is concerned. However one thing is for sure – truth only comes about when the time is right. This has to be backed up by the right series of events and changing time periods, all of which play a significant role in telling us the real truth – a subject upon which we base our paradigms of happiness, sorrow and hope. Trusting our different senses to provide us the truth is difficult to achieve because at times the picture in front of us looks gloomy and thus we are not able to properly comprehend the real meaning which is hidden behind the image. We interpret different things and that too of a complex nature. However the picture is straightforward and it is our lack of attention to detail which makes us go hayw ire during such discussions. Truth is merely the right ingredient of our understanding plus the manner in which we interpret the different series of events. Now if we understand what essentially truth is, we will also delve deep into how it has come about and what it will offer to us with the changing times – the most sought after details related with its attached impediments. Truth usually never comes alone. It has different issues underlying the presence of truth in essence and hence this truth becomes all the more difficult to comprehend once it is in sight of the people for which it is of paramount

Discussion prompt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Discussion prompt - Essay Example When I previously thought of Vodou, of course the dolls came into my mind first. I thought of practitioners of Vodou were like witch doctors. I thought of it more as a witchcraft type of religion. I can presume that my opinion of this religion was based only on what I had learned from the media, primarily in movies. I had stereotyped the religion and thought of it as a practice with male hierarchy who worked in the Bayou in Louisiana. That is simply not the case with Mama Lola as a priestess of Vodou. She is everything that is good and is very welcoming to the people who need help. Mama Lola is actually one of the most well-known priestesses in Vodou. She learns from the spirit what people’s problems are. Anyone can come to her regardless of their own religion, status, class, ethnicity or some other classification. She teaches more about Vodou to others and she is strong in her belief system. She simply wants to help others based on what she has learned from the philosophies of the religion of Vodou and the worship of the spirits. Much of Vodou is practiced through various traditions such as songs and chants. It is not through the use of Vodou dolls. Mama Lola introduces the humanism and spiritualism that are intertwined within the practice of her religion. Any theology about Vodou that I previously assumed was void. Her religion is a lifestyle and it her entire life encompasses the belief. Vodou actually encompasses more than what meets the eye as well. As long as she has a faith in what she is doing and is able to practice and help others, she is doing what she truly believes she was put on this earth to do. That is what I believe religion actually is now. I think it is finding a way to discover a meaning to life and making it count for something. We may never know our purpose here on earth but through religion, we can look at the bigger picture. No one way could be the right way but as long as we have some

Minorities in Usa Essay Example for Free

Minorities in Usa Essay Background to Immigration 1. Which groups of immigrants made up the American nation at the end of the 18th century? Which waves of immigrants were there in the 19th century? Where did they come from? †¢ English colonists, Pilgrims, who set sail in 1620 on the Mayflower †¢ Swedes began their migration to America in 1638 as an organized group of colonizers sent by the Swedish Government to establish a colony in Delaware †¢ In 1655, the colony was lost to the Dutch. †¢ During the colonial era (1680-1776) most of the immigrants came from Northern Europe. †¢ In the mid-1840s, Swedish migration began and continued up to World War I. †¢ During this wave (1820-1890: â€Å"old immigration†) immigrants from Germany and Ireland came to the U.S, as well as groups, from England, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and Eastern Europe. †¢ In a third wave (1890-1930: â€Å"new immigration†) more immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe and from Mexico, Canada and Japan 2. Characterize immigration from 1900 to 1948. †¢ In 24 years the volume of immigrants rose up to 15.5 million †¢ Americans became afraid of losing their culture, which lead to a more frequent occurrence of racial issues †¢ In the 1920s the Federal Government restricted immigration, what soon led to a decrease of it 3. Which percentage of the American population is non-European in origin today? Which are the largest minority groups and how many members do they comprise? †¢ 35% of the American population is non-European in origin †¢ 35904000 black people make up the largest minority group with 12,8% 4. What is meant by the terms â€Å"melting pot† and â€Å"salad bowl†? What evidence is there for racial tension? Give reasons for this. †¢ They describe the American society along with its cultural and ethnic diversity. †¢ Melting Pot: all ethnicities and their cultures have blended to form a single, diverse American culture †¢ Salad Bowl: many distinct cultures exist side by Each group keeps its own identity and customs. †¢ Racial issues were not addressed until the civil rights movement of the 1960s †¢ Racial tensions have been expressed in a series of race riots †¢ Yet racial prejudices and religious intolerance still exist Immigration Legislation 5. Which measures were taken to regulate immigration during the 20th century (legislation)? What did they aim to do, how effective were they and how do they reflect policy changes with regard to immigration? What laws are in force at present? Era of Restriction: †¢ A policy of restricting immigration ended the open door era. †¢ Immigration Act of 1917: all newcomers over 16 years of age had to pass a literacy test or would have been rejected. Workers from India, Indochina, Afghanistan, Arabia, the East Indies and other smaller Asian countries were not approved. †¢ Quota or Johnson Act of 1921: the number of immigrants from each country was limited to 3% of the foreign-born of that nationality as recorded in the U.S. census of 1910. †¢ Immigration or Johnson-Reid Act of 1924: reduced the annual number of immigrants to 165,000 Era of liberalization: †¢ McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 made needed skills the criterion for the first 50% of visas for each country. The Western Hemisphere was provided with 120,000 visas per year, the Eastern Hemisphere was granted an annual number of 170,000. †¢ Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986: allowed illegal immigrants who had been in the US before 1982 to apply for legal residence, set fines and penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants. †¢ Immigration Act of 1990: raised the annual number of immigrant visas by 200,000, doubled the annual number of asylum seekers who could become permanent residents. †¢ Immigration Act of 1996: more border barriers, more immigration agents, stiffer penalties for smuggling peoples, easier deportation of illegals and terrorists. 6. What is a â€Å"green card† and how can it be obtained? †¢ A green card is a US permanent residence visa. †¢ It enables any person to live and work permanently and legally in the United States †¢ Three options to obtain a green card: 1.the US Department of State allocates some 50,000 diversity visas per year to applicants from certain, winners are chosen by a random drawing. 2.Non-US-citizens with a special educational qualification can obtain it apart from common application procedures 3.Marriage with an US-citizen or with a green card-holder respectively. 7. What is â€Å"affirmative action†? †¢ It calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions. †¢ I also can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority or a woman over the white or the man. References †¢ Bernard, William S. (1998), â€Å"Immigration: History of U.S. Policy†, in: David Jacobson, ed., The Immigration Reader. America in a multidisciplinary perspective, Oxford, 48-91. †¢ Bromhead, Peter (1988), Life in Modern America, Essex. †¢ Kleinsteuber, Hans J. (1984), Die USA. Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Hamburg. †¢ Mauk, David, John Oakland (20023), American Civilization. An Introduction, London – New York. †¢ Wersich, Rà ¼diger B., Hrsg., (1996), USA-Lexikon. Schlà ¼sselbegriffe zu Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Geschichte und zu den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen, Berlin. http://www.usa-green-card.com/GC_FormShell.asp?Action=Questions#QuestionWhatIsGreenCard http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/01hate.pdf http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Seditious Suspicion: Toward a Hermeneutics of Resistance :: Essays Papers

Seditious Suspicion: Toward a Hermeneutics of Resistance In his book Freud and the Philosophers, the hermeneuticist Paul Ricoeur coined the phrase â€Å"the school of suspicion† to describe the method shared by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Their common intention, he claims, was the decision â€Å"to look upon the whole of consciousness primarily as ‘false’ consciousness†¦ [taking] up again, each in a different manner, the problem of Cartesian doubt, to carry it to the very heart of the Cartesian stronghold,† (Ricoeur, 33) that is, applying doubt’s caustic and destructive epistemological impulse to the internal world. Their achievement lies in the introduction of a profoundly new process of interpretation. Contrary to â€Å"any hermeneutics understood as the recollection of meaning,† (Ricoeur, 35) that is, any idea of interpretation as a ‘proper listening,’ the â€Å"masters of suspicion† saw the act of exegesis as one of deciphering, demystification. A message must be more th an simply heard; reception is not equivalent to comprehension. Signification, by this logic, is a coded affair, and without the cipher it will be received but not understood. Ricoeur makes a point to draw a sharp line between suspicion and skepticism here; there is no question that symbols have a message to convey. Suspicion is â€Å"a tearing off of masks, an interpretation that reduces disguises.† (Ricoeur, 30) Where the skeptic allows the suspicious impulse to run unchecked, suspicion works to â€Å"clear the horizon†¦for a new reign of Truth.† The radical skeptic’s childish destructiveness is untempered by a creative, inventive act: â€Å"the invention of an art of interpreting† (Ricoeur, 33). How, then, could this hermeneutics be applied to film? It seems a strange realm for the school of suspicion to find converts. The ‘suspension of disbelief’ would seem to be wholly at odds with the sharp and merciless blade of doubt. And yet, since The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, certain films, generally from the genre of science-fiction, have been whittling away at our naà ¯ve faith in the real and the reality of our neighbors. If these films were to be gathered together as a genre (and a recent spate of such movies indicates that Hollywood has begun to recognize the appeal of such a grouping), we might call it the cinema of suspicion. For the most part these movies, like Seconds or Total Recall, rarely lead us to question the very existence of reality. They almost never advocate quiescence in the face of the deceit of our senses.

”Heritage” by Countee Cullen Essay

This poem is titled â€Å"Heritage† and is by Countee Cullen (for Harold Jackman). The social issue that motivated Cullen to write Heritage is the oppression that blacks faced and their eagerness to go back to the place that their ancestors were taken from. In the poem Cullen reflects the urge to reclaim the African arts, during this time, the Harlem Renaissance, blacks called this movement negritude. Cullen depicts the negro speaking on the view of Africa, by the all negroes. In the poem, Cullen uses auditory imagery, organic imagery, and visual imagery. Cullen uses auditory imagery to draw his readers in to hear what he hears. The meaning of this poem is to take the reader on a journey of what the negro felt about Africa. Line 12-30, the negro explains that he hears large animals all about and how he can hear the birds of the sky sing. He also explains the sounds of drums that he can hear. Drums in Africa were used for one or two reasons, either celebrations or during war time. This literary device was effective because Cullen captivated what the negro would have heard had he been in Africa. Then Cullen uses organic imagery to draw his readers in to feel what he felt. The usage of this literary device was to show the reader what the negro was feeling when Africa was the thought. In line 22-30, the Cullen uses many metaphors that all tie and have a connection. For example, â€Å"So I lie, fount of pride, dear distress and joy allied, is my somber flash and skin, with the dark blood damned within like great pulsing tides of wine that, I fear, must burst the fine channels of the chaffing net.† Blood from within refers to the negro not being able to change himself from being black. The metaphor is relating wine to blood, pulsing tides to veins, and chaffing net to the heart. Lastly, Cullen uses visual imagery draws the readers in to visually see what the negro sees when he thinks about Africa. Cullen uses this literary device effectively because the reader is able to connect with the negro when thinking about Africa. First, Cullen opens with an unanswered question. Then in lines 1-10, Cullen begins to help us visualize what Africa looks like  through the eye of the negro. He goes to the scenery of Africa by referring to it as the copper sun and scarlet sea. In this allusion, he is describing the reflection of the sun on the water. The negro also spoke about the people of Africa. â€Å"Strong bronzed men, or regal black women from whose loins I sprang when the birds of Eden sang.† Women from whose loins I sprang, he’s talking about the queens of Africa. Strong bronzed men referred to the men who looked like himself during this time, and â€Å"†¦one three centuries removed,† referred to the slave trade. The negro definitely take s the reader on tour of Africa to see, hear and feel everything that he did. In conclusion, the poem was used as a key to unlock some of the thoughts the negro had concerning Africa. The negro in this poem was a representative of all negroes during this time; their thoughts and the their feelings toward Africa. Cullen’s usage of the literary devices allow for an effective expression of the meaning of this poem. Poems are intensified language of experience, so the devices assured the connection of the reader to the poem and the experience. This applies to many issues in society today because as beautiful as our country is there are still dark clouds that cover the very essence of what the states once stood for.

Creativity, Critical Thinking and Change Essay

1.1. Throughout this century, a famous painting entitled The Man with the Golden Helmet was believed to be the work of the Dutch master Rembrandt. Some years ago it was proved to have been painted by someone else. Some people would say that the truth about this painting changed. Do you agree? Explain. The book tells us that truth is the accurate representation of objective reality, and that our assumptions, and wishes do not affect the reality of the facts. With that being said; I would say yes the truth about the painting changed. Since there is hard evidence that proves it was not the work of Rembrandt then, the truth has changed. 1.2. Examine each of the following cases in light of what you’ve learned about truth in this chapter. State your view and explain why you hold it. a. Ira is a journalist. Will the belief that he can create his own truth make him more or less likely to value accuracy in his reporting? If Will believes he can make his own truth it will make him less likely to value accuracy in his reporting. The news is one thing and opinions are another. By creating his own truth he is interjecting his opinions, and ignoring the facts of the news. b. Bruce is prejudiced against minorities and women. Which of the following beliefs would be more helpful in overcoming his prejudice; the belief that truth is subjective and created; or the belief that truth is objective and discovered? Explain your reasoning. I would say that belief that truth is objective and discovered would help Bruce in overcoming his prejudice in minorities and women. This way of thinking about truth relies on facts, and historical truth; where Bruce could look back at history and find instances where women and minorities have excelled. If Bruce continues to believe that he can create his own truth, it is likely he will continue to not look at the facts and continue to judge people based on race and gender. c. Most students can use additional motivation to learn. Will the belief that they can create their own truth help or hinder their motivation? Explain. The book tells us that this belief can stifle success because it leads one to believe that just the belief – not talent or hard work will guarantee success. This will hinder motivation because belief in oneself is just part of the equation for success. If they believe that truth is discovered this will help motivate them to study hard and be successful. 1.3. Classify each of the following exchanges as (a) an actual contradiction or (b) a near contradiction. Briefly explain each choice. MAVIS: Big time college sports are corrupt. Near contradiction. The statement can be both true and false in the same way at the same time. Not all big time college sports or corrupt, but some are. CORA: You’re absolutely wrong, Mavis. Â  Actual contradiction. The statement cannot be true and false in the same way at the same time. Mavis is wrong or right. KAREN: There are very few real heroes today. Â  Near contradiction. This is an opinion so it can both be true and false in the same way at the same time. HANNA: I think there are more today than there have ever been. Actual contradiction. This statement cannot be true and false in the same way at the same time. BRAD: Look at that new Lincoln across the street. Actual contradiction. This statement cannot be true and false in the same way at the same time. CLARA: That isn’t a Lincoln – it’s a Mercury. Â  Actual contradiction. This statement cannot be true and false in the same way at the same time.

Best Summary and Analysis The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8

Best Summary and Analysis The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8 SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips In Great GatsbyChapter 8, things go from very bad to much, much worse. There’s an elegiac tone to half of the story in Chapter 8, as Nick tells us about Gatsby giving up on his dreams of Daisy and reminiscing about his time with her five years before. The other half of the chapter is all police thriller, as we hear Michaelis describe Wilson coming unglued and deciding to take bloody revenge for Myrtle’s death. Get ready for bittersweetness and gory shock, in thisThe Great GatsbyChapter 8 summary. Quick Note on Our Citations Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text. The Great Gatsby: Chapter 8 Summary That night Nick has trouble sleeping. He feels like he needs to warn Gatsby about something. When he meets up with Gatsby at dawn, Gatsby tells Nick nothing happened outside Daisy’s house all night.Gatsby’s house feels strangely enormous. It’s also poorly kept - dusty, unaired, and unusually dark. Nick advises Gatsby to lay low somewhere else so that his car isn’t found and linked to the accident. But Gatsby is unwilling to leave his lingering hopes for Daisy.Instead, Gatsby tells Nick about his background - the information Nick told us in Chapter 6. Gatsby's narrative begins with the description of Daisy as the first wealthy, upper-class girl Gatsby had ever met. He loved her huge beautiful house and the fact that many men had loved her before him. All of this made him see her as a prize. He knew that since he was poor, he shouldn’t really have been wooing her, but he slept with her anyway, under the false pretenses that he and she were in the same social class. Gatsby realized that he was in love with Daisy and was surprised to see that Daisy fell in love with him too.They were together for a month before Gatsby had to leave for the war in Europe. He was successful in the army, becoming a major. After the war he ended up at Oxford, unable to return to Daisy. Meanwhile, Daisy re-entered the normal rhythm of life: lavish living, snobbery, lots of dates, and all-night parties. Gatsby sensed from her letters that she was annoyed at having to wait for him, and instead wanted to finalize what her life would be like. The person who finalized her life in a practical way that made sense was Tom. Gatsby interrupts his narrative to again say that there’s no way that Daisy ever loved Tom - well, maybe for a second right after the wedding, tops, but that’s it. Then he goes back to his story, which concludes after Daisy's wedding to Tom.When Gatsbycame back from Oxford, Daisy and Tom were still on their honeymoon. Gatsby felt like the best thing in his life had disappeared forever. After breakfast, Gatsby’s gardener suggests draining the pool, but Gatsby wants to keep it filled since he hasn’t yet used it. Gatsby still hopes that Daisy will call him. Nick thanks Gatsby for the hospitality, pays him the backhanded compliment of saying that he is better than the â€Å"rotten crowd† of upper-class people (backhanded because it's setting the bar pretty low to be better than "rotten" people), and leaves to go to work. At work, Nick gets a phone call from Jordan, who is upset that Nick didn’t pay sufficient attention to her the night before. Nick is floored by this selfishness - after all, someone died, so how could Jordan be so self-involved!They hang up on each other, clearly broken up. Nick tries to call Gatsby, but is told by the operator that the line is being kept free for a phone call from Detroit (which might actually be Gatsby's way of clearing the line in case Daisy calls? It's unclear).On the way back from the city, Nick purposefully sits on the side of the train car that won’t face Wilson’s garage. Nick now tells us what happened at the garage after he, Tom, and Jordan drove away the day before. Since he wasn't there, he's most likely recapping Michaelis's inquest statement. They found Myrtle’s sister too drunk to understand what had happened to Myrtle. Then she fainted and had to be taken away. Michaelis sat with Wilson until dawn, listening to Wilson talk about the yellow car that had run Myrtle over, and how to find it. Michaelis suggested that Wilson talk to a priest, but Wilson showed Michaelis an expensive dog leash that he found. To him, this was incontrovertible proof of her affair and the fact that her lover killed Myrtle on purpose. Wilson said that Myrtle was trying to run out to talk to the man in the car, while Michaelis believed that she had been trying to flee the house where Wilson had locked her up. Wilson had told Myrtle that God could see everything she was doing. The God he’s talking about? The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburgon the billboard near the garage. Wilson seemed calm, so Michaelis went home to sleep. By the time he came back to the garage, Wilson was gone. Wilson walked all the way to West Egg, asking about the yellow car. That afternoon, Gatsby gets in his pool for the first time that summer. He is still waiting for a call from Daisy. Nick tries to imagine what it must have been like to be Gatsby and know that your dream was lost. Gatsby’s chauffeur hears gunshots just as Nick pulls up to the house. In the pool, they see Gatsby’s dead body, and a little way off in the grass, they see Wilson’s body. Wilson has shot Gatsby and then himself. So the moral of the story is, if you have a nice pool, try to use it more often. Key Chapter 8 Quotes She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed himhe had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived thereit was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisyit increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. (8.10) The reason the word â€Å"nice† is in quotation marks is that Gatsby does not mean that Daisy is the first pleasant or amiable girl that he has met. Instead, the word â€Å"nice† here means refined, having elegant and elevated taste, picky and fastidious. In other words, from the very beginning what Gatsby most values about Daisy is that she belongs to that set of society that he is desperately trying to get into: the wealthy, upper echelon. Just like when he noted the Daisy’s voice has money in it, here Gatsby almost cannot separate Daisy herself from the beautiful house that he falls in love with. Notice also how much he values quantity of any kind – it’s wonderful that the house has many bedrooms and corridors, and it’s also wonderful that many men want Daisy. Either way, it’s the quantity itself that â€Å"increases value.† It’s almost like Gatsby’s love is operating in a market economy– the more demand there is for a particular good, the higher the worth of that good. Of course, thinking in this way makes it easy to understand why Gatsby is able to discard Daisy’s humanity and inner life when he idealizes her. For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and therelike rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor. Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately-and the decision must be made by some force-of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality-that was close at hand. (8.18-19) This description of Daisy’s life apart from Gatsby clarifies why she picks Tom in the end and goes back to her hopeless ennui and passive boredom: this is what she has grown up doing and is used to. Daisy’s life seems fancy. After all, there are orchids and orchestras and golden shoes. But already, even for the young people of high society, death and decay loom large. In this passage for example, not only is the orchestra’s rhythm full of sadness, but the orchids are dying, and the people themselves look like flowers past their prime. In the midst of this stagnation, Daisy longs for stability, financial security, and routine. Tom offered that then, and he continues to offer it now. "Of course she might have loved him, just for a minute, when they were first marriedand loved me more even then, do you see?" Suddenly he came out with a curious remark: "In any case," he said, "it was just personal." What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured? (8.24-27) Even though he can now no longer be an absolutist about Daisy’s love, Gatsby is still trying to think about her feelings on his own terms. After admitting that the fact that many men loved Daisy before him is a positive, Gatsby is willing to admit that maybe Daisy had feelings for Tomafter all, just as long as her love for Gatsby was supreme. Gatsby is ambiguous admission that â€Å"it was just personal† carries several potential meanings: Nick assumes that the word â€Å"it† refers to Gatsby’s love, which Gatsby is describing as â€Å"personal† as a way of emphasizing how deep and inexplicable his feelings for Daisy are. But of course, the word â€Å"it† could just as easily be referring to Daisy’s decision to marry Tom. In this case, what is â€Å"personal† are Daisy’s reasons (the desire for status and money), which are hers alone, and have no bearing on the love that she and Gatsby feel for each other. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever. (8.30) Once again Gatsby is trying to reach something that is just out of grasp, a gestural motif that recurs frequently in this novel. Here already, even as a young man, he is trying to grab hold of an ephemeral memory. "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruptionand he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye. (8.45-46) It’s interesting that here Nick suddenly tells us that he disapproves of Gatsby. One way to interpret this is that during that fateful summer, Nickdid indeed disapprove of what he saw, but has since come to admire and respect Gatsby, and it is that respect and admiration that come through in the way he tells the story most of the time. It’s also telling that Nick sees the comment he makes to Gatsby as a compliment. At best, it is a backhanded one – he is saying that Gatsby is better than a rotten crowd, but that is a bar set very low (if you think about it, it’s like saying â€Å"you’re so much smarter than that chipmunk!† and calling that high praise). Nick’s description of Gatsby’s outfit as both â€Å"gorgeous† and a â€Å"rag† underscores this sense of condescension. The reason Nick thinks that he is praising Gatsby by saying this is that suddenly, in this moment, Nick is able to look past his deeply and sincerely held snobbery, and to admit that Jordan, Tom, and Daisy are all horrible people despite being upper crust. Still, backhanded as it is, this compliment also meant to genuinely make Gatsby feel a bit better. Since Gatsby cares so, so much about entering the old money world, it makes Nick glad to be able to tell Gatsby that he is so much better than the crowd he's desperate to join. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry. "I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon." Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid. "You weren't so nice to me last night." "How could it have mattered then?" (8.49-53) Jordan’s pragmatic opportunism, which has so far been a positive foil to Daisy’s listless inactivity, is suddenly revealed to be an amoral and self-involved way of going through life. Instead of being affected one way or another by Myrtle’s horrible death, Jordan’s takeaway from the previous day is that Nick simply wasn’t as attentive to her as she would like. Nick is staggered by the revelation that the cool aloofness that he liked so much throughout the summer - possibly because it was a nice contrast to the girl back home that Nick thought was overly attached to their non-engagement - is not actually an act. Jordan really doesn’t care about other people, and she really can just shrug off seeing Myrtle’s mutilated corpse and focus on whether Nick was treating her right. Nick, who has been trying to assimilate this kind of thinking all summer long, finds himself shocked back into his Middle West morality here. "I spoke to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window" With an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it, "and I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!' " Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous from the dissolving night. "God sees everything," repeated Wilson. "That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight. (8.102-105) Clearly Wilson has been psychologically shaken first by Myrtle’s affair and then by her death - he is seeing the giant eyes of the optometrist billboardas a stand-in for God. But this delusion underlines the absence of any higher power in the novel. In the lawless, materialistic East, there is no moral center which could rein in people’s darker, immoral impulses. The motif of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes runs through the novel, as Nick notes them watching whatever goes on in the ashheaps. Here, that motif comes to a crescendo. Arguably, when Michaelis dispels Wilson’s delusion about the eyes, he takes away the final barrier to Wilson’s unhinged revenge plot. If there is no moral authority watching, anything goes. No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clockuntil long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. (8.0) Nick tries to imagine what it might be like to be Gatsby, but a Gatsby without the activating dream that has spurred him throughout his life. For Nick, this would be the loss of the aesthetic sense - an inability to perceive beauty in roses or sunlight. Theideaof fall as a new, but horrifying, world of ghosts and unreal material contrasts nicely with Jordan’s earlier idea that fall brings with it rebirth. For Jordan, fall is a time of reinvention and possibility - but for Gatsby, it is literally the season of death. The Great GatsbyChapter 8 Analysis Now let's comb through this chapter to tease apart the themes that connect it to the rest of the novel. Themes and Symbols Unreliable Narrator. However much Nick has been backgrounding himself as a narrative force in the novel, in this chapter, we suddenly start to feel the heavy hand of his narration. Rather than the completely objective, nonjudgmental reporter that he has set out to be, Nick begins to edit and editorialize. First, he introduces a sense of foreboding, foreshadowing Gatsby’s death with bad dreams and ominous dread. Then, he talks about his decision to reveal Gatsby’s background not in the chronological order when he learned it, but before we heard about the argument in the hotel room. The novel is a long eulogy for a man Nick found himself admiring despite many reasons not to, so this choice to contextualize and mitigate Tom’s revelations by giving Gatsby the chance to provide context makes perfect sense. However, it calls into question Nick’s version of events, and his interpretation of the motivations of the people around him. He is a fundamentally unreliable narrator. Symbols: The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. The absence of a church or religious figure in Wilson’s life, and his delusion that the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are a higher power, underscores how little moral clarity or prescription there is in the novel’s world. Characters are driven by emotional or material greed, by selfishness, and by a complete lack of concern about others. The people who thrive - from Wolfshiem to Jordan - do so because they are moral relativists. The people who fail - like Nick, or Gatsby, or Wilson - fail because they can’t put aside an absolutist ideal that drives their actions. The American Dream. Remember discussing variously described ambition in Chapter 6, when we saw a bunch of people on the make in different ways? In this chapter, that sense of forward momentum recurs, but in a twisted and darkly satiric way through the Terminator-like drive of Wilson to find the yellow car and its driver. He walks from Queens to West Egg for something like sixor sevenhours, finding evidence that can’t be reproduced, and using a route that can’t be retraced afterward. Unlike Gatsby, forever trying to grasp the thing out he knows well but can’t reach, Wilson homes in on a person he doesn’t know but unerringly reaches. Society and Class. By the end of this chapter, the rich and the poor are definitely separated - forever, by death. Every main character who isn’t from the upper class - Myrtle, Gatsby, and Wilson - is violently killed. On the other hand, those from the social elite - Jordan, Daisy, and Tom - can continue their lives totally unchanged. Jordan brushes these deaths off completely. Tom gets to hang on to his functionally dysfunctional marriage.AndDaisy literally gets away with murder (or at least manslaughter). Only Nick seems to be genuinely affected by what he has witnessed. He survives, but his retreat to his Midwest home marks a kind of death - the death of his romantic idea of achievement and success. Death and Failure. Rot, decay, and death are everywhere in this chapter: Gatsby’s house is in a state of almost supernatural disarray, with â€Å"inexplicable amount of dust everywhere† (8.4) after he fires his servants. Amidst the parties and gaiety of Daisy’s youth, her â€Å"dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor† (8.19). Nick’s phrase for the corruption and selfishness of the upper-class people he’s gotten to know is â€Å"rotten crowd† (8.45), people who are decomposing into garbage. Gatsby floats in a pool, trying to hang on to summer, but actually on the eve of fall, as nature around him turns â€Å"frightening,† â€Å"unfamiliar,† â€Å"grotesque,† and â€Å"raw† (8.0). This imagery culminates in figurative and literal cremation, as Wilson is described as â€Å"ashen† (8.0) and his murder-suicide as a â€Å"holocaust† (8.3). By the way, remember that when Fitzgerald uses the word â€Å"holocaust,† he isn’t talking about what happened in Nazi Germany - he is writing about 20 years before WWII. Instead, the word â€Å"holocaust† here means a sacrificial offering that is burned on an altar - unrooted to any specific religion, Wilson’s actions evoke an atavistic, pagan ritual sacrifice. Something is very rotten in the state of Denmark†¦ uh, Long Island. That rotten thing? The rich. Crucial Character Beats Nickhas a premonition that he wants to warn Gatsby about. Gatsby still holds out hope for Daisy and refuses to get out of town as Nick advises. Nick and Jordan break up - he is grossed out by her self-involvement and total lack of concern about the fact that Myrtle died the day before. Wilson goes somewhat crazy after Myrtle’s death, and slowly becomes convinced that the driver of the yellow car that killed her was also her lover, and that he killed her on purpose. He sets out to hunt the owner of the yellow car down. Wilson shoots Gatsby while Gatsby is waiting for Daisy’s phone call in his pool. Then Wilson shoots himself. What’s Next? Think about the novel’s connection to the motif of the seasonsby comparing the ways summer, fall, and winter are described and experienced by different characters. Get a handle on Gatsby’s revelations about his past by seeing all the events put into chronological order. Move on to the summary of Chapter 9, or revisit the summary of Chapter 7. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Dinosaurs at the National Museum of Natural History

Dinosaurs at the National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History The Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History is comparable in size to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, but less of its floor space is devoted to dinosaurs. Even so, youll find a considerable number of dinosaur skeletons herenot fabricated reproductions, but actual fossils, including the famous roadkill Triceratops that (until the 1990s) was the most complete in the world, the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus, and the sauropod Diplodocus. Most of these reconstructions can be viewed in the exhibit The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost World, along with lesser-known genera like Thescelosaurus and Sphaerotholus. One of the oldest dinosaur museums in the world, the National Museum of Natural History has had to periodically remove its exhibits from display in order to restore or refurbish them (or, in some cases, to completely repose them according to the latest theories of dinosaur physiology). For example, the Triceratops mentioned above has been given a complete facelift, as has the museums famous Stegosaurus (which has been reoriented so that it appears to be reacting to the Allosaurus skeleton directly behind it, which clearly intends to eat it for lunch). If youre interested in any fossils over and above dinosaurs, youll unfortunately have to wait until 2019, as the National Museum prepares the National Fossil Hall for the public. If you simply cant wait, though, you can access a live view of the hall-in-progress at the museums website.

The Influence that Salvador Dali Had on the Surrealist Movement Essay

The Influence that Salvador Dali Had on the Surrealist Movement - Essay Example The essay "The Influence that Salvador Dali Had on the Surrealist Movement" will consider the art movement called surrealism and comment on the influence of Salvador Dali, one of its greatest practitioners at the forefront of this art movement. Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the most popular artists of the surrealist movement. Surrealism can be defined as the stuff of dreams, what is held in the subconscious or unconscious, and it is the expression of these thoughts that were the impetus behind the surrealist movement. It is the complete absence of regulated thought and action, in fact the anti thesis of it. The objective of the surrealist movement was to give flight and power to spontaneity and celebrate the absence of order or contrived circumstances. Negative emotions ran high against the established powers after World War I- in fact surrealism was on the rise even in the waning days of World War II. The portrayal of anti establishment sentiment through art and literature de fined the surrealist movement in many ways. Dali in fact took on the name of his elder brother who had died nine months before he was born. His father was a lawyer, notary and a strict disciplinarian. His mother however encouraged his artistic pursuits. Dali believed he was a reincarnation of his brother after it was suggested by his parents that he had similar features to the deceased sibling. Dali was deeply attached to his mother and was distraught on her death in 1921. After her death, his father married her sister, Dali’s aunt. ... With a sharp sense of fashion, he was regarded as a dandy. However his art stood out as well as he was experimenting with Cubism at the time. However he was thrown out of school before the final exams after uttering the scandalous comment that there was no one competent enough to examine him. Dali moved to France and his early works were heavily inspired by Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso, whom Dali adored. Inspired by the artist Diego Velazquez, Dali began sporting a distinctive moustache that became an iconic trademark for the rest of his life. Dali met his future wife Gala, a Russian immigrant ten years his senior at a fellow artist Paul Eluard’s residence in 1929. They were married in a civil ceremony in 1934 and later celebrated a Catholic wedding in 1958. Dali had up to this point been supported by wealthy art collector Edward James of the UK. Dali’s work was introduced to the USA by the art critic In 1931 Dali created his most well known masterpiece ‘The Persis tence of Memory’ and the rest as they say is history. He became so famous that even the creator of the surrealist movement Andre Breton began to grudge him with the taunting derogatory nickname Avida Dollars meaning ‘eager for dollars’. During World War II, Dali and his wife moved to the USA, staying there for eight years. However beginning in 1949, Dali moved back to Catalonia, Spain. After World War II, Dali’s work included influences from religion, science and even optical illusions. Dali’s health suffered a serious setback in the 1980 when his wife in her senility had been feeding Dali with a dangerous cocktail of drugs that impaired his health and made one hand shake uncontrollably. After Gala herself died in 1982, Dali tried to kill himself through starvation but was