Physical blindness (page 31) is symbolic of the contrast between those who can physically see but are literally blind and those who are physically blind but are capable of seeing.…
After reading the book “Into The Wild” there are many words that come to mind when describing Christopher McCandless. To Jon Krakauer Chris McCandless was rash, but Krakauer insists that McCandless “wasn’t a nutcase, he wasn’t a sociopath, he wasn’t an outcast. McCandless was something else - although precisely what is hard to say. A pilgrim perhaps”(85). The real question still remains unanswered, what precisely was McCandless? Chris McCandless ultimately should be described as a romantic. Chris was a free spirit, he was a counterculture adventurer who escaped the shackles of prescribed society and lived for the moment. He ended his relationship with endless consumption and simply went out and experienced people and places for what they really…
The most important place in Chris McCandless’s life is quite possibly the place he died, the fateful Fairbanks bus number 142. The bus is situated in a clearing in the Alaskan wilderness, surrounded by tall trees, undisturbed by the advances of modern life. While the painting is based on an actual image of bus 142, the vast emptiness of the clearing around the bus symbolizes how alienated McCandless felt by his community for his atypical beliefs. The brush growing around the bus and in the corner of the clearing represents modern views trying to invade his personal set of values. In the background, the fir trees represent all the different people in McCandless’s life and how powerful their influences on him. The bigger trees are people like Jim Gallien and Wayne Westerberg, both…
Overview The Boston Beer Company has had amazing success in its transition from a small scale microbrewer to a large scale national brewery. Almost all of the company’s success is due to the Samuel Adams Lager product line, which has hardly changed from the founding of the company in 1984, to the IPO in 1995, to the present day. In fact, much of the appeal of Samuel Adams comes from its microbrew image and the founder, Jim Koch’s, commitment to the brewing process and a premium beer. In recent years, however, the company has implemented a new strategy for growth which has included introducing a light beer that will have more mainstream appeal. While this has increased profits for the company, it has also left the company vulnerable to entry by diluting its brand name. For this reason, the company’s strategy for the immediate future has to make a significant shift, from a strategy of growth to a strategy of protection. It must focus on maintaining its current profits by preventing entry both from small breweries looking to copy the BBC’s strategy and from large breweries looking to use their expansive resources to steal some of BBC’s market share.…
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” Robert’s “seeing” was used to challenge the narrator’s prejudice and narrow mindset. First, Robert quickly showed that his blindness did not hold him back from activities such as smoking and eating. The narrator is uncomfortable with anything that does not fit in the world he knows. He describes the blind man at first as “creepy” and his beard “too much.” At this point, the narrator only thinks of seeing as looking, rather than true insight.…
In Jorge Luis Borges’ piece from Ficciones, “Blindness” and Annie Dillard’s piece from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “Seeing”, we read writers’ perspectices on their own blindness. The writers contradict the common fallacies our culture has about blindness with their own personal experiences. Although both writers portray blindness in a positive light, each writer uses his disability to enhance his lives differently. Borges depicts his loss of sight as an opportunity to learn new things about life and himself, while Dillard uses her blindness as a way to better appreciate nature.…
When we first meet the narrator he is fearful of his new visitor and what it will do to his family and shows that he does not have very good feelings towards this blind man. The narrator immediately lets us know where he stands by saying "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit... And his being blind bothered me." (Carver 106). This statement shows a great deal of ignorance in the character and a good sense of short-sighted views. However, he goes to stress that "[His] idea of blindness came from the movies.". He uses the pop cultural reference to blind people to excuse his ignorance, but all he shows to the audience is that he knows only of fictional blind people and has to base his opinion on his visitor from that (Carver 106). With him being a honest character, he does reveal what is truly bothering him is his jealousy of Robert, but initially this information is clouded by the narrator's obsession with Robert's blindness. From that we can actually come out and say that the narrator is blind in the beginning of the story, and he's the one that can't see who Robert is. He even tells us that he has no real understanding of his wife when he mentions her poetry "I didn't think much of the poem. Of course, I didn't tell her that." even though he…
“There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.…
The narrator has many misconceptions built up in his head about the blind.”I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke... I knew only that much about blind people” (4). It was all he knew and all he really cared to know. There is a sense of discomfort imposed on the narrator with the blind man in his presence. Mainly because he doesn’t understand how someone without such a powerful sense can be so in-tuned with life. He was…
Throughout the story, Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, readers are shown the other side of blindness. In the world, one may assume that there is just one type of blindness- being sightless. “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver, 1). The meaning of blindness goes much deeper than that. Through the actions and words of a character, the husband in this short story, readers are shown how much ignorance, fear, and confusion one can have for someone who has literal blindness. All these negative feelings towards the blind man leads to the husband finding the blindness within himself.…
The novel is introduced with a prologue where the author acquaints us with the "invisible man" and why he is knowledgeable about his invisibility. His use of diction is simple and informal and his sentence structure provides the reader with short sentences that imply factual information about him. To invisible man; light is truth, people do not accept him as an individual for any matter, and he longs for his individual freedom but finds that the coward within himself stands in the way. The author's imagery of the character's invisibility is apparent throughout the prologue. He presents the reader with an image of a man in existence but a rejection of the very own society that he belongs to. "The invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a particular disposition of the eyes of those whom I come in contact." (pg. 3) Ellison backs up his use of imagery with vivid detail. He talks of society's "inner eyes." These eyes to him are the eyes that replace the physical ones and alter the authentic look on reality. Invisible man's outlook on society causes him to become detached. Because of the character's detachment, the tone of the prologue takes on an eerie effect that is created by a man who lives in his own existence and invisibility. The tone of the character also comes off as dreamy, for this very man longs…
The narrators statement at the very beginning of the story explains his own lack of knowledge concerning physical blindness. His lack of knowledge relating to the visitors disability is undeniable, yet he makes it very clear that he is…
A persons ability to see is often taken for granted as it is in the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. Although the title hints that the story is about a cathedral, it is really about two men who are blind. one of the men is Robert, the blind friend of the narrators wife. The other is the narrator, the husband himself; he is psychologically blind. through the husbands words and actions when he is dealing with Robert, the blind man, it is shown that the husband doesn’t “see” or understand what Roberts blindness means and how it changes or doesn’t change him as a person. At first, Robert makes the husband feel very uncomfortable, for the husband doesn’t know what to say or do around the blind man. As the story progresses, we can see a change in the husband, he seems to be able to see Robert as a person and not just a blind man.…
I am course leader on the Foundation Degree for Early Years at the further education institution in which I work. The foundation degree is delivered in collaboration with a higher education institution. There are fourteen modules on the course and I teach on up to ten of these modules over a two year programme of study. The course is delivered through a blended learning approach, encompassing both face-to-face and online ‘Moodle’ sessions, the latter being the name for the college’s virtual learning environment. The scheme of work (Appendix 1, pp8-15) that I have chosen for the purposes of this assignment relates to the module, ‘Perspectives on Play’, which is the first module taught on the first year of the foundation degree. There are a total of eight face-to-face and seven Moodle sessions occurring weekly on the Module.…
Employee. Engagement. Separately, each word has a clear, concise definition. Their descriptions are easy to grasp. However, once you put the words together the concept of employee engagement is complex because there are many variations on its definitions and dynamics that contribute to engagement. “To date, there is no single and generally accepted definition for the term employee engagement (Markos & Sridevi, 2010, p.90).” The difficulty of pinpointing an exact definition lies in the fact that employee engagement does not have the same meaning for everyone (Blessing White, 2011). The goal of this paper is to provide a general discussion of its definition, history, current state, future trends, and close the discussion with a conclusion.…