Explore how women are presented in Veronica and King Schahriar and his brother Essay

â€Å"Veronica† and â€Å"King Schahriar and his brother† are short stories which focus on two very different female characters. In â€Å"King Schahriar and his brother,† the strikingly beautiful and intelligent Scheherazade is a powerful, courageous woman who devises an ingenious scheme to help the girls of her kingdom escape the brutal grasp of the Sultan. â€Å"Veronica†on the other hand, focuses on a more vulnerable, unambitious female character living in a poverty and war stricken village in Africa, isolated from the outside world. Scheherazade in â€Å"King Schahriar and his brother† is portayed as being the perfect female figure. She is described as being beautiful beyond measure: â€Å"her beauty excelled that of any girl in the kingdom of Persia.† This impressive statement makes her seem exotic and creates a sense of wonder in the reader as the story is set in a mythical setting where one would imagine many enchanting women and yet she is seen as the most exquisite of all. Read more:  My admired person  essay The reader is told that she has the â€Å"best masters in philosophy, medicine, history and the fine arts.† Not only is she gorgeous but she is also very well educated! The use of superlatives such as â€Å"having the best† masters and being clever in the â€Å"highest† degree portray the high extent to which she has been educated and show what a powerful, dedicated and talented woman she is. Scheherazade lives what may seem a very envious lifestyle. Being the daughter of the â€Å"Grand-Vizier† she has high status amongst her people and lives a rich life of luxury. She is also very much loved by her family: â€Å"his eldest daughter, who was his delight and pride.† Her father adores her and makes sure she has the best things in life, granting her the highest education and he values her greatly. Unlike Scheherazade, Veronica is depicted by Okeke (her friend and narrator of the story) as being â€Å"no great beauty.† She is not very attractive compared to Scheherazade: she wears â€Å"shabby† clothes showing that she is poor and this makes her seem inferior to Scheherazade. We are aware of just how poor she is as she lives in a simple â€Å"hut† and later on in the story, Okeke says how bad the living conditions are-that the people in her village live in â€Å"acute poverty† and the place is â€Å"crawling with disease.† This personification of the village â€Å"crawling with disease† indicates just how helpless the villagers are against this silent, deadly killer and expresses the extreme poverty in which they live in. The reader may feel very sympathetic towards Veronica and view her as very unfortunate to live in such difficult and harsh conditions. In contrast to Scheherazade being loved and cared for by her family, Veronica has been mistreated during her life. Okeke tells us that: â€Å"her father was a brute,† â€Å"her mother was weak† and â€Å"she was the eldest child† meaning that she was mostly responsible for bringing up her younger siblings from a very young age and consequently would not have had the time, money or chance to continue her education after standard 5. Okeke describes how he would â€Å"lie awake listening to her screams.† This emotive language creates sympathy in the reader towards Veronica’s plight as an abused child. Due to Veronica’s lack of education and heavy responsibilities towards her family, she feels that she can never leave her village. She continually refuses Okeke’s offers to leave the village and complete her education as she is concerned about leaving her family behind and also does not see it as an option. She remains loyal to them even though she is beaten by her father and left to fend for herslelf most of the time, as well as for her mother and siblings. Her care and loyalty towards them is shown in her dialogue: â€Å"I can’t just leave my family.† The reader might feel a sense of admiration towards Veronica here as we realise she is giving up her life in order to care for her family. Even later on in the story when her parents and siblings are gone, and she now cares for husband and child, she still refuses to accept Okeke’s suggestion that she would be â€Å"better off in the city† . She has faced such hardship in the village and yet she doesn’t complain or express any discomfort. She says to Okeke: â€Å"Don’t be sorry for me. We are managing, and God has blessed us with a son. Is that not enough?.† In this dialogue Veronica indicates how the only thing she is focused on in life is her family and she believes that her only purpose in life is to care for them. As long as she is with her family, she is fullfilled-nothing else matters to her and she is admired by the reader for her dedication towards her family. Scheherazade on the other hand is a confident and optimistic person. Unlike Veronica, she is very ambitious and wants to promote women’s rights in her patriarchal country. Like Veronica is loyal to her family, Scheherazade is loyal and caring towards her people. She has high morals and knows of the Sultan’s barbaric actions, of marrying a new bride in the evening and killing her in the morning. Scheherazade’s loyalty is shown when she explains her plans to her father of offering to sacrifice herself to the Sultan. She tells him: â€Å"If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed I shall have done a great service to my country.† Her speech shows her great pride and patriotism. This dialogue further conveys her as being â€Å"perfect† and makes her seem a heroine as she is willing to risk her life for the good of the women in her kingdom. Scheherazade’s stubborness is shown when she refuses to listen to her father’s protests and insists on her marrying the Sultan. The repetition of â€Å"my father† and â€Å"will you grant me† illustrates her strong will to pursue her plan and her determination to get what she wants. Veronica is also stubborn-she expresses this when she rejects Okeke’s offers to move into the city but she insists on staying in the village with her family. Another similarity between Scheherazade and Veronica is that they are both very brave characters. Veronica is brave in the sense that she does not fear pain or death. After the war broke out in her village and her child and husband had passed away she had nothing worth living for and wanted to die too. Once again she refuses Okeke’s offer to help her and tells him to leave her in peace: â€Å"I don’t want to live you hear? Now that I have seen you I am happy. Go, and leave me in peace.† This emotional dialogue once again creates sympathy towards Veronica and shows her vulnerability. A sense of awe is felt towards her willingless to die and the reader may almost feel relieved at her passing, as she is finally escaping her tortured life. Scheherazade is also fearless of death. She has confidence in her plans to overthrow the Sultan, but she realises that she is taking risks and her failure may lead to her death. She is not afraid of the consequences however and is honoured to carry out her plan: â€Å"I implore you, by all the affection you bear me, to allow the honour to fall upon me.† Speaking in this elevated, polite tone to her father, the reader may admire her confidence and determination to be granted the permission from her father to sacrifice herself. The fact that she is â€Å"honoured† to do this for her country again makes her seem like a true heroine. In conclusion Veronica and Scheherazade are more different than alike, but they are both two women to be admired. They both have high morals and are very loyal and caring towards their families and the people around them. The woman who I admire the most however is Veronica because of her devotion towards her family. She accepts her fate and does not consider herself unlucky to be living in such poverty-she only values the fact that she has family to care for and truly gives herself up for them.

Sandra Cisneros’ Eleven

Eleven or One hundred and Two? Sandra Cisneros’ short story â€Å"Eleven† describes a young girl that is at a loss for words when her teacher embarrasses her in front of the class. How does Rachel convey her feelings on Mrs. Price’s authority? Rachel says in the third paragraph that she wishes she was one hundred and two instead of eleven and in saying so she thinks that if she was that age she would have known the words to answer Mrs. Price when she made her put on the ugly sweater that was not hers at all. She adds the two to the hundred as it makes the impression that one hundred is normal old but by adding the two she would be really old and know what to say. We move on and find that Rachel has a very difficult time dealing with the embarrassing fact that Mrs. Price is forcing her to put on the red â€Å"cottage cheese† smelling sweater and instead of standing up for herself she puts her head down and starts to cry, she thinks about her school friends like Sylvia Saldivar who she says is stupid but will probably tease her in the playground about the sweater. Rachel calms herself down with the thought of her parents waiting for her at home with her birthday cake and candles and her papa coming home to sing happy birthday, To summarize we find that on one hand Rachel is a very mature girl that talks about age in a very distinct manner and on the other hand she has a very passionate way of describing her feelings and the situation that she is in.

Cultural Awareness Essay

Culture and the environment affect a business in many ways. Culture is not simply a different language, a different shade of skin, or different styles of food. Culture, and the environment in which you are a part of, affect the running of day to day business operations of all companies’ day in and day out. This paper will assess how Linda Myers, from the article, â€Å"The would-be pioneer,† (Green, S. , 2011) was affected by the huge culture shock of working for a global conglomerate from Seoul, South Korea. We will discuss what went wrong with Ms. Myers approach to business, Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture as it pertains to the article, and make some recommendations based on the author’s thoughts. Let’s first start by discussing how culture and environment affect management in an institution. A culture and its environment affect the operations of a business because that culture generates practices based on its environment. To clarify, how a business sets its policies is based on cultural exceptions, like politics, points of view, whatever is considered the â€Å"norm† for that environment. In many cultures, it is also safe to assume that women do not have the same pull as a man in charge. An example of how women are belittled can be women in Middle Eastern countries that are forced to wear veils to cover their faces and walk behind their husbands, not hand in hand like in Western cultures. Politics plays a huge part in how a company runs as well. If a country is firm in the belief that men are the only way to accomplish goals and run the government, then companies under that government will more than likely have the same approach. Many countries still believe that men are superior and don’t quite believe that women should be in the workplace. We have seen American culture change to where women successfully run businesses. These gender based assumptions are inadequate to reality, however, some countries still hold on to those beliefs. For Ms. Myers, being successful in America, did not translate to being successful in South Korea. Although she was an executive, she had many barriers that hindered her from adequately helping the company in the ways that she wanted. Hofstede’s Five Dimensions of Culture  Dr. Geert Hofstede created the first four dimensions of culture in the 1970’s after analyzing statistical data from IBM over the course of many years. In the 1990’s he created the fifth dimension after noticing specific cultural differences in Asian countries and their ties to Confucian philosophy. (www. mindtools. com) The five dimensions are as follows: Power/Distance (PD), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Uncertainty/Avoidance Index (UAI), and Long Term Orientation (LTO). I will only discuss a few of these as they seem more prominent to this case. First, let’s talk about the Power/Distance (PD) dimension as it pertains to Ms. Myers in South Korea. Power/Distance (PD), â€Å"refers to the degree of inequality that exists- and is accepted- among people with and without power. A high PD score indicates that society accepts an unequal distribution of power, and that people understand â€Å"their place† in the system. Low PD means that power is shared and well dispersed. † (www. mindtools. com) As an example from the article, Myers goes on to say, â€Å"there were basically four levels: VP, director, manager, and worker bee. You only talked to people at your level. SK Telecom boasted that they were one of the first Korean cultures to rid themselves of a strictly hierarchal form of running. However, Myers saw that although they said that, they did not embrace that to the fullest. Merely putting something on paper does not constitute practicing the said task. In order for the company to have abolished the hierarchal form of leadership, they would have needed to instill better practices and allow more input from all levels of the company. Masculinity (MAS) refers to how a society views/values the traditional aspects of male versus female roles. This dimension ascertains that men are in the positions of power and women are to be in the home, or hold less valuable roles in the workplace. This example is considered a workplace with high MAS. A workplace with low MAS is considered to have male and female positions; however, those positions work closely together and do not get in the way of the work environment. This traditional view was another obstacle in Ms. Myers’ venture in Korea. The company brought her in to fix their issues with cultural growth, but did not utilize her to the best of her ability. She failed to recognize that the Eastern culture she was working for, did not allow her to have a longer â€Å"leash† like the American/Western companies she had worked for in the past. Uncertainty/Avoidance Index shows how anxiety of workers affects the workplace. High UAI is considered looking for rules and regulations for all situations. There is no â€Å"grey† area and everyone is to operate exactly the same. Low UAI refers to there being less rule writing and more personal growth and interpretation of the conflict or decision. In this article, I would say that SK Telecom had a high UAI however; Ms.  Myers herself was a person working with low UAI. Her anxiety and how she approached situations was not in-tune with the policies and procedures of the company. There were cultural boundaries such as language and expectations that she did not know how to confront. Although she was qualified for the position, she really was not prepared well enough to meet the tasks and policies of the company based on her experiences. The last dimension that really applies to this case is Long Term Orientation or LTO. This refers to how a company values a member’s loyalty/seniority in the company. Men and long time employees have more pull in the workplace. I feel as though SK Telecom valued the opinions of those members who had been with the company for a substantial amount of time. Bringing an outsider in to work, did not work with how the company operated internally. SK Telecom had high LTO and again Myers’ internal operation was with low LTO, a promotion of equality, creativity and individualism. Conclusion In this paper I discussed, The Would-Be Pioneer by Green. We discussed how the cultural differences affected Ms. Myers and how different South Korea is compared to Western culture. We also covered the four of five Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions that applied to the article. We discussed Power/Distance, Masculinity, Uncertainty/Avoidance Index, and Long Term Orientation, all of the factors that played a part in Myers’ failure as a consultant with SK Telecom. In the future, for those who look to work abroad, we should study as much about the culture as possible. We need to understand as much as possible about the work environment in which we work, if we wish to succeed in a foreign government.

African American Children and Religion Research Proposal

African American Children and Religion - Research Proposal Example Others have limited their coverage of the research population, excluding young African-Americans for a variety of reasons. This researcher, however, believes that there is an urgent need for research that highlights the positive aspects of the social behavior of today’s generation of young African-Americans, using data involving a youth research population. It is hoped that such an investigation of an important and growing sector of contemporary American society would contribute to knowledge of African-American culture, more specifically on the aspect of psychology of religion. It is further hoped that the results would provide concrete strategies for action that would inspire present and future generations of African-American families and youth to perform their important role in strengthening a nation founded on and inspired by Christian ideals. Aims of the Study The aims of this study are as follows: 1. To determine the impact of religious practice or non-practice on the social attitudes and behavior of African-American children from the ages 8 to 19 residing in a specific community. 2. To examine the religion-based determinants of positive social attitudes and behavior. 3. To identify and describe the positive religious practice role models of the research population under study. Hypothesis The study will test the following hypotheses: 1. African-American children who engage in positive religious practices develop positive social attitudes and exhibit positive social behavior (H.1). 2. African-American children who do not engage in any type of religious practice do not develop positive social attitudes and exhibit negative social behavior (H.2). Review of Literature and Preliminary Discussions One of America's founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, stated that "religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us benevolent, useful and beneficial to others" (Isaacson, 2003, p. 87-88). Over the last quarter of a millennium, American society has undergone a seismic shift in several aspects, more notably in the role of religion and the belief that its practice has beneficial effects on society. Several studies (Paul, 2005; Inglehart and Baker, 2000; Idler and Kasl, 1992) have attempted to show the correlation between America's social problems and the negative effects of secularization on the practice of religion, and that such a development would have detrimental consequences to the future of democracy. Aral and Holmes (1996) and Hummer et al. (1999) also showed that this phenomenon is evident not only in America but also in other developed democracies such as Europe and Japan. On the contrary, they argue, democratic nations such as those in predominantly Catholic Latin America and in parts of Africa with societies influenced by Christianity (such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia) where the people are noted for religiosity often exhibit the worst forms of social behavior. In another study, Barro and McCleary (2003) used the term "spiritual capital" in reference to the social benefits that proceed with the practice of religion. They concluded that Americ a's deep social problems in a period of great economic prosperity and the highest expenditures for health care among