Fences: African American and Troy Essay

In 1987, August Wilson’s â€Å"Fences† was a part of his Pittsburg Cycle of dramas of the 20th Century. These plays were used to â€Å"examine important elements of African American experiences† (Gardner 1331). The symbolisms in the play are used to tell the late life story of Troy Maxon and his relationship with family. From the start of the play, there is conflict and foreshadowing that shows Troy’s own belief that he has failed in life and that the world did not give him what he deserved. He believes that he has to venture outside of his family to find relief. At the start of the play, Wilson takes the audience into the seemingly happy life of Troy Maxon. The author then makes it clear that he felt like a failure and was not happy. The first symbol that is seen is the difference between the white people and the black people. Troy takes a stand and asks why black people never get to drive the trash trucks. Most of his coworkers believe that he will be fired. This theme of not being appreciated and believing that something is not enough is seen through all the symbols used in this drama. A second symbol seen is sports and dreams of the future. Troy had been in the Negro League and played baseball until he was over 40 years old. The problem presents itself when Troy is overlooked by the recently desegregated professional baseball league because of his age. His dreams of playing for the professional white league were smashed, and he believed that he had nothing to show his worth in the later years. This defeat in his career also defeated Troy mentally. From then on, he saw his family and his life as a failure that he wanted to escape from, yet he could not shake the feeling of responsibility to them. Troy’s first son, Lyons, is accepted by Troy. Lyons is a failure in Troy’s eyes and so Troy believes that Cory is no better than him. Lyons wants to be a musician, but he is not very successful. Troy sees Lyons failure in music career to be equivalent to his failure to get into the professional league. He believes that his son will eventually take an unskilled job and end up just like his father. In the last scene of the play it is revealed that Lyons did end up defeated, but not to the extent of his father. His love of music still lived and he was still pursuing his dream. Unlike his son Lyon, Troy’s feeling of failure is evident in his relationship with his son, Cory. Cory is an excellent football player, and yet, Troy refuses to acknowledge his son’s ability even when he is recruited by a college. Troy will not let Cory succeed where he failed and refuses to let Cory go to college on a football scholarship. In Act 1, Scene 3, Cory asks Troy â€Å"How come you ain’t never liked me? † (Wilson 1075). Troy is angry at this question and tells Cory that â€Å"†¦it’s my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you! † (Wilson 1076). However, even before this it is obvious that Troy sees Cory as nothing but an annoyance that continues until the final scene, when Cory arrives for Troy’s funeral. Troy’s relationship with his wife Rose is an unfaithful one. He is constantly stating that there is no better woman or wife, yet he has an affair with Alberta. Through this diversity, Rose is eventually presented as a model of the strong African American woman. She has given her life to Troy, and yet he has an affair with Alberta. He explains the affair as a way to ignore the responsibilities of his failed life. This aggravates Rose because he has never taken her feelings, wants or needs into consideration. Troy continues to be married to Rose, but also continues his affair with Alberta while Rose knows about the whole thing. Rose even accepts the call from the hospital when Alberta dies while giving birth. The full strength of Rose is not shown until Troy brings home his love child. He asks Rose to help him raise her. Rose’s response shows the intensity of her strength. She says, â€Å"From right now†¦this child got a mother. But you is a womanless man† (Wilson 1099). Rose makes it apparent that this child will have as good a life as Rose can give her and she will show no animosity or jealousy towards the child. Troy, on the other hand, will have the responsibility of the child, Rose, Lyons, and Cory while receiving nothing in return. Throughout all these trials, the fence is essential in the explanation of Troy’s life. Rose had requested the fence, and it symbolized her family being held together. The fact that Troy never really worked on the fence showed that he was not in love with Rose, but felt a responsibility to her. He wanted his freedom and the fence symbolized his imprisonment. The symbol of the fence throughout this play connects everything back to the fact that Troy Maxon was unhappy with his life, and felt as if he were a failure. He felt no real responsibility to Lyons, hence their relationship was better. Troy was jealous of Cory and reminded of his failures by Rose. Wilson used the fence to tell this story. It was not just a story of a life seen as a failure, but a look into the mind and thoughts of an African American man of the 1950s. Works Cited Wilson, August. Fences. Literature: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner, 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. 1053-1111. Print. Gardner, Janet, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, Peter Schakel, eds. Literature: A Portable Anthology. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. Print.

The Impact of Scale on Francesco Borromini’s Sac Carlo Alle

San Carlo Quattro Fontane, known in popular speech as â€Å"San Carlino’ in reference to its small size, is Roman Catholic Church built between 1638- 1648 by an Architect named Francesco Borromini from Ticino, precursor to the modern day Switzerland. San Carlo Quattro Fontane is located in Rome, Italy on the crossing of Strada Felice and Via Pia was built originally for the Spanish Trinitarians as an extension of their already existing monastery .San Carlo alle Quattro Fontanne is often considered Borromini’s most iconic masterpiece of Baroque architecture for his signature use of undulating surfaces, pure mathematical forms and conforming geometrical shaping. San Carlo is significantly small given the magnitude of baroque constructed during Borromini’s time however does this hinder San Carlo’s architectural effect and impact as a classified baroque form of architecture? Francesco Borromini was a stone mason by trade and started off as a stone mason in hi s early career.Under directions of his father, he was sent to Milan for perfecting his skills in stone cutting when he was introduced to the craft of architecture before moving to Rome in the early 1600’s and started work for his distant relative and architect, Carlo Maderno. Only after Maderno’s death did Borromini became acquainted with the great Gian Bernini. Bernini became Borromini’s great friend and colleague as they worked on projects such Maderno’s Palazzo Barberini and the Baldachin in Saint Peter’s Cathedral.Bernini was impressed with Borromini’s novel formulation of architectural detail, something he has greatly perfected as a stonemason. The pair would become prime influences of the Italian baroque movement in Rome of the 1600s in advance of Pope Sixtus V ‘s â€Å"Roma in forma sideris† plan of Rome. Unlike Bernini’s character traits of being able to please aristocratic and the powerful, Borromini was a lonely , withdrawn man who looked to become an independent architect who prided himself on his specialized training and gained the most modest degree of recognition.As a Result Borromini began to part ways, both stylistically and personally, with Bernini and set about finding his own projects. On Borromini’s later works, Bernini criticized Borromini in abandoning the anthropomorphic nature in building design. At the time it was argued that building proportions should be derived from the proportion of the body of a man, the proportions of the Vitruvian man (as seen below), as it was argued that the proportions of the man was modeled in the image of God.Boromini however believed in the science of mathematics and how the idea of geometry and nature being inseparably connected, much like what Gallaleo wrote about, and he tries to bring light and shape to the fore of his style. After being commissioned by the Cardinal Francesco Barberini of the Spanish Trinitarians, Borromini’s fi rst independent commission, Borromini departs from the orthodox interpretations of antiquity and takes up his own style in reference to his ideals on geometry and mathematical proportions. As a result of Borromini’s freedom to create in the image of his ideals, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane has elements of unparalleled spatial complexity and Curvilinear Facades. The entire exterior facade of the church is an example of Borromini’s predilection for convex and concave forms which creates an undulating surface which transforms the movement of the facade from static to highly dynamic, or as observers would observe, almost like a wave.In addition to the curvilinear form the front of the church, the front facade is divided into two stories by projecting cornices and laterally divided by four ionic columns with capitals. The main body of the church is an undulating ovular shape with a ovular dome and a lantern on top of it to let light into the body, just like oculus in the pantheon. However the basic concept of the plan does not derive from an oval but from the main theme of the order of religion, The Spanish Trinitarians, which believes in the holy trinity.The plan and direction of the church is orientated based on the diagram below where the holy trinity, symbolized as the triangle is put back to back to form a diamond shape. This diamond shape is then inscribed on the outside making an oval shape, the shape of the main body of the church. Within this oval shape two circles are drawn and from those circles lines can be drawn from one point to another from the church and thus making those lines the direction of the architecture . The interior of the church can be vertically divided into three principal arts of the lower order at ground level, the transition zone of the pendentives and the ovular dome with it’s oval shaped lantern. Dividing the lower part of the church to the upper part is again the occurrence of undulating lines above the ioni c columns which envelop the lower part of the church. The ovular dome shape is made of interconnected squares, crosses, hexagons and octagons which diminish in size as they rise up towards the oval shaped lantern which allows natural light to pass in and dramatize the all white interior of the church.The scale of the church is relatively small compared to the monumental likes of grand architecture such as the Piazza di San Pietro by Bernini, as it was noted that the size of the San Carlo Church can fit in the one of the dome columns at Saint Peter’s basilica However Borromini exploration with small buildings on complicated ground planes which presented, often, irregular spaces, led to a new form of architectural expression which was extremely radical at the time.His ability to maintain architectural unity with the use of curvilinear of both the interior and exterior of the church, along with the mixture of classical components from ancient Greece, highlights the significance of the San Carlino Church as a new form which broke away from the contemporary architecture which mainly derived from Vitruvius’ ideals, seen widely expressed during that time period.However such a radical change in contemporary architecture at the time was too radical and Borromini’s work was met with critical harshness. Due to his poor critical response from art and architecture critiques at the time, he received very little acclaim during his life and consequently didn’t receive as many opportunities to create such as the likes of his old colleague Bernini and often worked for religious orders rather than the papal church.Thus arriving at my opinion that if Borromini was given the chance to design on a much larger scale for example the papal church, his architectural forms and thinking would have been taken more serious and thought about more and would have no doubt had greater influences on architecture which preceded it. Due to the lack of funding of his pr ojects, the scale of San Carlo all Quattro Fontane was extremely small yet it was packed with such elegance and adorned with such detail. In my opinion if improvements could be made, the location and the scale of the church could’ve further highlighted the architectural genius of Borromini.

Personal risk management plan

Risk and costs happen all the time in our lives. Everyone will encounter a variety of risks. A risk management plan is a process that identifies loss exposures faced by an organization and selects the most appropriate techniques for trading such exposures. The first step for all of the risk plans is identifying the loss exposures. The first kind of loss exposure I'm identifying is health loss exposures. This kind of loss exposure can be costly, such as disability, sickness or even premature death.The second loss exposure is property loss, such as pet damage for the apartment. I have a cat for which I have to pay a deposit for it to live in the apartment, but it may damage the apartment and that will cost me; it's a loss exposure. Loss of equipment can be a property loss such as a lost cell phone in class, a stolen Pad or a laptop left in the library. I lost my pod before and I know I will never get it back. Also, bank accounts or online accounts can be stolen or used by someone else. Car theft or a car accident can be accounted as a property loss.If the car gets stolen or if it gets into an accident, such as no fault, fault with property damage or fault with bodily injury, I won't have anything to drive. The third one, for me, is the foreign loss exposures. Because I'm from a foreign country, I have to travel to go back home so when I take the plane, some loss exposures exist, such as acts of terrorism on the plane or at the airport, accidents, and lost baggage in the airport with all my belongings inside. Sometimes, when I purchase plane tickets I also purchase the flight insurance to cover up the loss if anything happens.Also the currency lost exposures are also under the foreign loss exposures. For example, I bought Chinese currency when the exchange rate was 1 :8 and now the exchange rate change to 1:6, I lost part of my money because of the change of the currency in the market and the possibility that the rate may keep dropping throughout times. The fourth catalog I have is the crime exposures including robbery and fire damage. In addition to the big part of crime exposures, there are Internet and computer loss exposures and identify loss, such as losing your passport or ID card.The second step for a risk management plan is to analyze the loss exposures and he third step is to select an appropriate risk management technique for treating the loss exposure utilizing the risk management matrix. There are a number of changes of loss under the health loss exposure catalog. According to my insurance policy, sickness is identified as â€Å"Illness or disease which first manifests itself, is contracted or commences, and for which a licensed physician identified diagnosis is recorded during the period the Insured Person's coverage is in force†.The probability of me getting sick during the flu season is really high. I may have to go to the clinic to get reattempts and skip classes, which will cost me the chance to be in class and learn knowledge. For that circumstance, the loss frequency is low and the loss severity is not high, either. If I missed class while I was in the clinic, I could get an excuse for being sick. I could also ask my classmates for the notes and even email my professors to ask what I missed and study it by myself, after all.Depending on the risk management matrix in the case, my getting the flu fits the retention technique. But if I get a horrible virus from the flu that causes me to stay in the hospital and be absent or a few days, the loss severity will be higher because the cost of recovery will be higher and the cure time will be longer. In that case, I need the medical insurance that Marshall University requires all the international students to have. The medical expense benefits under the policy are the maximum benefit of $250,000 per injury and sickness with the deductible of $50 per policy year.The policy will pay 90% of the POP (preferred provider organization) allowance for covered m edical expenses incurred until an out of pocket maximum of $5,000 has been met; then 100% of POP allowance is paid thereafter, and the accidental death benefit is $1 5,000 per life. From the technique of risk management, we can tell this kind of loss with low loss frequency and high severity belongs to the insurance. The insurance company won't mind if it happened one time.Nonetheless, this kind of loss can be avoided easily, like keeping myself warm and washing my hands more often, not going out in the public so frequently during the flu season. Damage to my 2012 Mazda 3 because of a collision with another vehicle, nature, or another hazard would be handled through this risk management plan technique of insurance. My current auto policy has both the comprehensive coverage and collision coverage with a deductible set at $1,000 on each. Bodily injury liability of property damaging limit for each accident is $25,000; medical payments coverage for each person is $5,000.Uninsured motor vehicle coverage is If I get in an accident damaged the car and have to put it into the shop, I have the car rental and travel expenses coverage, and the insurance company will cover 80% of the rental for each day and $500 for each loss. Also the deductible is $400 on my car. Because I'm a new driver, in the case of an accident the loss severity is high. However, because I'm a new driver, I pay more attention to not cause an accident so the loss frequency is low. The appropriate risk management plan is insurance.Online and banking accounts can be hacked easily today, all of my information can be found online. Bank cards can be copied by online shopping; some websites reveal my payment information and a few days later I received a phone call from my bank telling me my card had been used on a few websites spending a mass of money on strange things. They thought is was identity theft so they froze my account and stopped the payments and also made a cancellation. Under this condition, l oss frequency is really high and the loss severity can be high as well, so the appropriate risk management technique is avoidance.A foreign loss exposure such as currency is a high chance of loss. When I first came to the Untied States, the exchange rate between dollars and Chinese Yuan was 1 to 8. 3, it meaning 1 dollar was worst 8 Yuan. My father bought at least $25,000 and wired it to my account when the rate was around 1:8. 3, but a short time after the read, the rate went down to 1:7. China's economy is growing, so fast that exchange rate is Just keeps dropping, so we lost some money Just because the currency rate was dropping and kept dropping.Using the risk management matrix, you can see the loss frequency is high because Chinese money is worth more value everyday and the loss severity is also high, so the best I can do it to avoidance the loss. So now my father only transfers little amounts of money to my account and puts the majority in the bank. Once I swipe the card in th e USA the bank exchanges the money with the rent exchange rate to avoid the loss exposure from the rate dropping. I currently reside in an apartment in Huntington and my rental office requires that everyone have to have renters insurance.According the text, I would have low frequency and high severity when dealing with rental insurance. My renters insurance is through my host family's homeowner's insurance policy, which is provided from State Farm. My current deductible is set at $1000 and the current policy has the following covers the following: Personal Property up to $20,000, Personal Liability for each occurrence p to $100,000, Medical Payments for each occurrence up to $1,000, Credit Card/ Bank Card and Forgery up to $1,000, Damage to Property of Others up to $1,000, Loss of Use (Actual Loss Sustained) up to $500.The current policy also has added on Endorsements, which included the following: Jewelry and Fur up to $1000, Silver/ Gold ware Theft up to $2,500, Business Property up to $1 ,500, Firearms up to $2,500, Home Computer up to $5,000, Fire Department Service Charge up to $500 When reviewing the risk management, I find out I don't really have a lot of protection insurance. When it is time for me to implement my plans by contacting insurance agencies and finding the best one to meet my needs.Then the step that I would take would be to go over all of my risk assessments every year to better insurance that I am getting the best deal. This would change if a major purchase occur, such as a child was born, or a newer car was purchased. My personal risk management will be easily assessed, because you continuously have to pay the bills on insurance and so you are reminded of it. However, it's important to reconsider your policies and needs, so that you can revise your policies correspondingly.

What can critical theory tell us about international politics Essay

What can critical theory tell us about international politics - Essay Example This paper expounds on the various contributions of the critical theory to international politics. According to Thompson (1990), the philosophical and historical meaning of critical theory is ambiguous and it is both narrow and wide. In its narrow aspect, the critical theory is a development that runs down from several German philosophers and sociologists of â€Å"Western Europe Marxism†, which in other terms is referred as the Frankfurt school. Marxist or Frankfurt theorists argue that the major defining characteristic of the critical theory is that it seeks liberation or emancipation of the human being (Joseph, Andras and Stomp, 2010 p 63). This includes emancipating human beings from enslaving situations and conditions. From the narrow perspective of the critical theory that is concerned with liberation of people, various theories have been developed from the perspective that examines critical theory in a much broader sense. Various factors have contributed to the emergence of these broader critical theories, but the underlying fact is that they originate from diverse social movements that are concerned with â€Å"the authority or domination of people in the contemporary societies† (Chantal 1990 p29). ... Secondly, the critical theory should provide significant account of both the historical and cultural circumstances affecting the individual as well as the society from which the theorists own intellectual activity relies (Craig 1995). Thirdly, critical theory should be a continuous and critical reassessment of the constitutive classes that includes the historical construction of the examined framework. Finally, a critical theory should establish an important engagement with other works seeking social explanation with intention of elucidating the strong and weak points, but also showing the logic behind their misunderstandings in addition to demonstrating the capacity to include their contributions in order to establish a firm and logical theoretical foundation (Craig, 1995 pp87-96) According to Burchill et al (2005, p68) critical theory is â€Å"self-reflective and motivated by values†. The principal objective of critical theory is to change the contemporary society from an op pressive, unjust and inhumane form into a society that respects and demonstrates justice, rationality, humanity and reconciliation (Chantal, 1990, p53). Therefore, critical theory is charged with various responsibilities that are crucial in our contemporary historical circumstances at both local and international level. Some of the roles of the critical theory include promoting and diversifying education provided in the society so that people can develop different expertise and knowledge that protects the society from the dangers of overspecialisation in a particular discipline (Thompson, 1990). Intellectually diversified individuals are capable of thinking