“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath Essay Example for Free

â€Å"Mirror† by Sylvia Plath Essay The poem â€Å"Mirror† by Sylvia Plath is told from the point of view of a mirror hanging up on a wall. This mirror has, over time, been privy to the tears of a woman over who she sees in it, desperate grasps at moonlit lies, and the endless speculations of a pink with speckles wall. â€Å"Mirror† is a poem that probes into the corners of human nature, beauty, life, and death, reflecting back their truths to readers as good mirrors do. In this poem, readers can see the truth about themselves reflected among the words as though the poem itself is a mirror, too. Just as the poem reflects truths to readers, so the mirror in it reflects truths to the woman it sees every day. It is objective about everything it observes in the woman, for it can have no biases simply owing to the nature of its stature. The description the mirror gives of itself in the first few lines is that â€Å"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions./Whatever I see I swallow immediately/Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike./I am not cruel, only truthful-/The eye of the little god, four cornered.† It is giving, true to its nature, a frank description of itself—nonjudgmental and unprejudiced of its admirers. Mirrors never have and never will pass any judgment on their gazers. They leave that for the gazers themselves to do, and they always do just that, as is human nature. The mirror prides itself on that same clear-cut honesty of the faces it regurgitates back for judgment. It is almost arrogant about it, refusing to falter in its own perfection for a moment, even as â€Å"she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon† which cast false shadows upon her face. It continues to reflect the woman honestly, even though she cannot see it, so that when she learns of the lies and turns back, there she is in all her self-perceived imperfection. Not one person, the woman of the poem included, has ever been judged by a mirror, but rather through it. It is because of it that the woman can see her outer self, so also because of it, she sometimes forgets her inner self. She forgets the pink behind the speckles on the wall of her face, seeing only that the speckles are marring the beauty of it. The mirror, however, does not see the destruction the woman sees, for she is the only one of the two who has the desire to judge. She was the only true master of herself, but she ended up caving in under her preconceived notions of society’s view of her. She became a slave to the mirror and her interpretations its truths. One of these truths is age. No one has yet achieved immortality, and so death is still a formidable foe. Mirrors  reflect the coming of this rival in the rivulets and creases found in a face of age, and many people obsess over this manifesting. In the poem, according to the mirror, â€Å"I am important to her. She comes and goes./Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness./In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.† The woman in the poem â€Å"h as drowned a young girl† in her obsessions, aging her into â€Å"an old woman . . . like a terrible fish.† With each day, the manifestation becomes more pronounced because â€Å"Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.† She wasted away in front of that mirror so that now, death â€Å"Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.† She hates the mirror’s honesty on the matter, but cannot turn away. She is unable to resist knowing that death is creeping ever closer every day. She lives her life, it seems, around that knowledge, convinced that she should not be as she is. She is, as the poem says, â€Å"Searching . . . for what she really is.† She is unaware that all around her, death is marking others down for capture with the lines of age. All she knows is that she has gone from â€Å"pink, with speckles† into a world of darkness that she disapproves of seeing in the mirror. She does not seem to under stand that in fact, no one will be left unaffected. â€Å"The eye of the little god† will seek out everyone from all four corners of the globe. In the end, her obsession kills her, the â€Å"terrible fish† having finally made it to the surface. The woman in the poem lives and dies within it, mirroring any and all readers’ lives in that. The poem offers up a universal reflection of a person for readers to judge themselves. After all, it is a mirror and that is what mirrors do.

Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights :: Free Essay Writer

Wuthering Heights centers around the story of Heathcliff. The first paragraph of the novel provides a vivid physical picture of him, as Lockwood describes how his â€Å"black eyes† withdraw suspiciously under his brows at Lockwood’s approach. Nelly’s story begins with his introduction into the Earnshaw family, his vengeful machinations drive the entire plot, and his death ends the book. The desire to understand him and his motivations has kept countless readers engaged in the novel. Heathcliff, however, defies being understood, and it is difficult for readers to resist seeing what they want or expect to see in him. The novel teases the reader with the possibility that Heathcliff is something other than what he seems—that his cruelty is merely an expression of his frustrated love for Catherine, or that his sinister behaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romantic hero. We expect Heathcliff’s character to contain such a hidden virtue because he resembles a hero in a romance novel. Traditionally, romance novel heroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only later to emerge as fiercely devoted and loving. One hundred years before Emily Brontà « wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that â€Å"a reformed rake makes the best husband† was already a clichà © of romantic literature, and romance novels center around the same clichà © to this day. However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves so great and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even as a desire for revenge against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc. As he himself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely sadistic, as he amuses himself by seeing how much abuse she can take and still come cringing back for more. Critic Joyce Carol Oates argues that Emily Brontà « does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does to Isabella, testing to see how many times the reader can be shocked by Heathcliff’s gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist on seeing him as a romantic hero. It is significant that Heathcliff begins his life as a homeless orphan on the streets of Liverpool. When Brontà « composed her book, in the 1840s, the English economy was severely depressed, and the conditions of the factory workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were so appalling that the upper and middle classes feared violent revolt. Thus, many of the more affluent members of society beheld these workers with a mixture of sympathy and fear. In literature, the smoky, threatening, miserable factory-towns were often represented in religious terms, and compared to hell. The poet William Blake, writing near the turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of England’s â€Å"dark Satanic Mills.† Heathcliff, of course, is frequently compared to a demon by the other characters in the book.

Relationship Between Savings and Investment in the Nigerian Economy

Introduction Interests in the study of economic growth and development have been on the increase especially since the middle of the present century. Economic growth results in the expansion of a country’s production possibility curve such that the potential output of the country is increased beyond the previous levels. Thus growth is often defined in terms of a sustained increase in the real per capita income of a country.Simon Kuznets in (Todaro, 1885), defined a country’s economic growth as â€Å"a long term rise in the capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population, this growing capacity based on advanced technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments that it demands†. Growth is therefore measurable and objective. It describes expansion in capital, in the labour force, in output, income, consumption e. t. c.It should be noted that economic growth is sometimes used interchangeably with economic development. A distinction of the two was however made by (Jhingan, 1976) where he defined economic development as the ‘non-quantifiable measure of the growing economy† i. e. the economic, social and other changes that lead to growth such as changes in techniques of production, social attitudes and institutions e. t. c. No matter the distinction what is important in the words of (Iyoha, 1996) is that there is no development without growth.One point that must be mentioned however is that in practice, economic growth is used to describe the process of growth in advanced industrialized countries while economic development is used to describe the dynamics of growth in low income non-industrialized countries. This position is buttressed by (Romer, 2001), where he posited that over the past few centuries, standard of living in industrialized countries has reached levels almost unimaginable to their ancestors.He affirmed that although comparisons are difficult, the best available evidence suggests that a verage real income today in the United States and Western Europe are between 10 and 30 times larger than a century ago, and between 50 and 300 times larger than two centuries ago. Following from the above, Kuznets identified six characteristics of modern economic growth. These are:  ¦ High rate of growth of per capita output and population.  ¦ High rate of increase in total factor productivity, especially labour. High rate of structural transformation of the economy.  ¦ High rate of social and ideological transformation.  ¦ Outward expansion of the developed economies i. e. the ability to reach out to the rest of the world for raw materials and markets.  ¦ The international flow of men, goods and capita. It then follows that for all these to be achieved especially for a developing economy like Nigeria some economic variables within the context of the features of the Nigerian economy must be marked upon to achieve these status mentioned above.Statement of research problem S o many blurred visions about the projection of Nigerian economy have been seen by the operators of the Nigerian economy. In the days of Abacha administration between 1993 and 1997, it was vision 2010 as led by former Head of State, Ernest Shonekan. 2010 is around the corner and nothing seems to have changed the last 15years. Another journey is being embarked upon by Yaradua and his economic team. The mission of making Nigeria one of the biggest 20 economies in the world by 2020, vision 2020-20.Whether this is achievable or not is best left for debate for scholars of economics. But if one must follow the position of Robert Solow (1956), the Ramsey-Cass-Koopman model (1928, 1965, 1965) and the Diamond model (1965), achieving the above is a function of thorough understanding of production function of a given economy. Nigeria like most countries is blessed with abundant human and natural resources, yet the economy is still groping with problems.Evidence is palpable that apart from incom e from sales of crude oil, the nation is close to zero in terms of technological advancement. The reason for this is no other than that the much needed investment to motivate technological advancement and industrialization is not forthcoming. The position of the government immediately after independence to embark upon import substitution as an industrialization strategy did not equally help matter.If investment is a catalyst for industrialization and hence economic growth, investment is made possible by another catalyst in savings. Over the years, there has not been any synergy between savings and investment in Nigeria. This problem is because of little emphasis partakers in the running of the economy are giving financial intermediation. It is in a country like Nigeria where the borrowers reign supreme at the expense of the lender.The deposit rates to the supplier of funds from the surplus units are not only meager but pittance, while the lending rates collected from the users of fu nd in the deficit unit is astronomical. So it is the issue of cutting the depositors with knife’s edge while cutting the borrower with razor’s edge. Savings is not encouraged while investment is discouraged. Economic activities slowed down, productivity neglected while economic growth in the real sense of it is stagnant.

Ecotourism in South Africa - 1327 Words

South African ecologists currently face many challenges relating to the conservation of biodiversity and the growing economy. Excessive hunting and land development, as well as unemployment, all remain growing concerns for this struggling country. Jan-Hendrik, a South African who made contact with us, stated, â€Å"South Africa has lots of social and economic problems because most people are poor. To get them to middle class requires the economy to grow through mines and the expansion of living areas† (Hendrik). The growth of South Africa’s economy often occurs at nature’s expense. Mining, fracking, expansion of living areas and big game hunting all benefit the economy. Unfortunately, each have detrimental effects on the land and animals.†¦show more content†¦In order to effectively combat these issues, leaders must implement new courses of action that involve fundraising and awareness through the use of rhetorical sensitivity. According to Lloyd F. Bitz er, associate professor of speech at the University of Wisconsin, a rhetorical situation arises when a circumstance requires the attention of an audience. The audience must overcome obstacles to achieve a certain goal set forth by the leader utilizing rhetorical discourse (Bitzer 9). Fundraising provides one way for South African eco-tourism companies to maintain their business and promote more jobs for local people. In order for fundraising to yield the best results, leaders must be aware that â€Å"there is no reason to apologize for asking for a gift to a worthwhile cause† (Rosso 6). Essentially, leaders must have confidence in their cause, whether it includes the preservation of South Africa’s wildlife, the protection of its animals, or the promotion of employment among members of the community. This positive attitude encourages tourists to donate more money or time to the companies, aiding in achieving the goal’s fulfillment. 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