Cathedral

The short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver develops characters through an intriguing perspective. In general, the narrator shows the realistic human attitudes and attributes, but there is also a depth that shows another interpretation. The writer, Carver, not only creates a realistic human picture, he uses the old story of the “deliverer” to rework the story into something different and more unique. He uses the characters to bind stories into readers’ minds into deeper level of his perspectives. Carver obviously wants us to see the narrator’s character as figuratively “blind.” As the story opens, the narrator gives a short background about his wife and the blind man’s relationship, and the readers can sense his disgust and unwillingness to understand what it is like to be blind. He only has concerns for himself and how uncomfortable he will be in the situation. The writer wants the readers to see how ignorant the narrator is, due to his lack of social life. The narrator keeps on ridiculing the blind man.

Story of an Hour

The main theme to this short story relates a lot to the saying, "carpe diem", meaning to seize the day, along with living your life to the fullest with out any constraints. Along with the theme, there were several basic literary terms that I've noticed a lot and those are symbolism, metaphors, and irony, similies and personification. The story starts out right away describing Mrs. Mallard having a heart disease, and how the news of her husband's death couldnt be brought up to her in an easy manner. Once Mrs. Mallard was told the news about her husband from her sister Josephine, she immediately started to weep. "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with paralyzed inability to accept its significance." This passage shows Mrs. Mallards guilt and little posession of faith mostly because she realized that she had taken her husband for granted. Also, by taking her husband for granted, she felt like there was nothing else that she could do besides lose all hope in his survival which left Mrs. Mallard with nothing but heartbreak and depression. But what Mrs. Mallard doesnt know is that Mr. Mallard was a constraint to her well being and living a fullfilled life.

Cuba in Baseball

A great number of Cubans played on baseball Teams in the Professional, Semi-pro, Amateur and Sugar Mill Leagues in Cuba. Cubans have played abroad in just about all the baseball playing nations. In the United States, Cubans played proudly and with distinction in theMajor Leagues, Minor Leagues, and Negro Leagues. Ballplayers like Esteban Bellán, José Méndez, Martín Dihigo, Adolfo Luque, Miguel González, Minnie Miñoso, Camilo Pascual, Tony Pérez, and Jose Contreras have had stellar careers in baseball. Several Cubans are listed among the greatest players in baseball History . Also, many of the greatest American ballplayers have played in Cuba. Americans like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige have graced the ballfields of the island nation. Many have appeared on Cuban Baseball Card sets and Collectibles.

Pollution

International catastrophes such as the wreck of the Amoco Cadiz oil tanker off the coast of Bryttanny in 1978 and the Bhofal Disater in 1984 have demonstrated the universality of such events and the scale on which efforts to address them needed to engage. The border less nature of atmosphere and oceans inevitably resulted in the implication of pollution on a planetary level with the issue of global warming. Most recently the term persistent organic pollutant (POP) has come to describe a group of chemicals such as PBDEs and PFCs among others. Though their effects remain somewhat less well understood owing to a lack of experimental data, they have been detected in various ecological habitats far removed from industrial activity such as the Arctic, demonstrating diffusion and bio accumulation after only a relatively brief period of widespread use.Growing evidence of local and global pollution and an increasingly informed public over time have given rise to environmentalism and the environmental movement, which generally seek to limit human impact on the environment.

Friendship in Culture

During the time of the Roman Empire, Cicero had his own beliefs on friendship. Cicero believed that in order to have a true friendship with someone there must be all honesty and truth. If there isn’t, then this isn’t a true friendship. In that case, friends must be one hundred percent honest with each other and put one hundred percent of their trust in the other person. In Russia, for example, one typically accords very few people the status of "friend". These friendships, however, make up in intensity what they lack in number. Friends are entitled to call each other by their first names alone, and to use diminutives. A norm of polite behaviour is addressing "acquaintances" by full first name plus patronymic. These could include relationships which elsewhere would be qualified as real friendships, such as workplace relationships of long standing, neighbors with whom one shares an occasional meal and visit, and so on.In the Middle East and Central Asia, male friendships, while less restricted than in Russia, tend also to be reserved and respectable in nature. They may use nick names and diminutive forms of their first names.

Poverty in the world

In the developed world live about 20% of the global population. However, not all who live in it have an acceptable standard of living. As in the poorest countries, a few concentrated most of the wealth. The growth of global wealth in developed countries is accompanied, paradoxically, an increase of contrasts and, above all, an increase of poor population. For example, in the United States, the 400 largest fortunes in the country a concentrated amount of resources equivalent to saving all the rest of U.S. citizens, while twenty million people go hungry fruitless days a month, according to a study by the University of Harvard. The expansion of this phenomenon, a partner in many of the cases to the problems of marginality in urban areas, has led to coin a new term: the 'Fourth World' to refer to the group of disadvantaged population in more developed areas. That is, the 'Fourth World' is made up of poor people in rich countries.

My Favorite Sport

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players, and is widely considered to be the most popular sport in the world It is a football variant played on a rectangular grass or artificial turffield, with a goal at each of the short ends. The object of the game is to score by manoeuvring the ball into the opposing goal. The modern game was codified in England following the formation of The Football Association whose 1863 Laws of the game created the foundations for the way the sport is played today. Football is governed internationally by the (International Federation of Association Football), commonly known by the acronym FIFA. The most prestigious international football competition is the FIFA World Cup, held every four years. This event, the most widely viewed in the world, boasts an audience twice that of the Summer Olympic Games.

Cost in Iraq

According to a new report from National Priorities Project (NPP), the United States is spending between $97 and $215 billion dollars annually on military action to defend access to oil and natural gas reserves around the globe. The Military Cost of Securing Energy provides a critical analysis of the military cost of defending U.S. energy concerns overseas. The report estimates that the military spends up to 30 percent of its annual budget to secure access to energy resources internationally.The plan proposed by President Bush and Secretary Paulson for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street is difficult for most people to comprehend. At NPP, we've been crunching the numbers and offer this analysis of what $700 billion means to taxpayers

Generation Kill

A few months ago was played in an HBO a TV series about the war. Generation Kill is a story that shows the problems faced by troops in Iraq. This is a group of young soldiers whom want to fight the terrorists, but they faced problems that have never thought. Many of them are not in accordance with their heads and often, their biggest problems are the difference between many of them. The lack of experience and youth is a critical factor during the war and all things they’ll face.The characters in this miniseries are two men in Bravo Company's First Recon Sgt. Brad Colbert, known as Iceman, a lean, tautly laconic discipline and team leader, and his driver, Cpl. Josh Ray Person who is small, chatty and a little silly. Evan Wright is a writer and journalist of the magazine Rolling Stone. Ray is another marine who entertains and irritates his comrades with nonstop. Rudy Reyes is a Hispanic marine; he is always talking about politics issues. Trombley is the youngest of the group, he is just 19 years. Lt. Nathaniel Fick who often do not agree with the orders of their superiors, the Captain America who is obsessed and hysteric with war, and Lt. Col. Stephen Ferrando known as the godfather, he is an ex- football star favored by the battalion’s ambitious and reckless commander.

Tragic stories

The thief and dogs and Hamlet are expressed many negative feelings, in the end these are merged to cause the desire for revenge in the main characters. Both have similar focus on revenge, but different plot. In Thief and the dogs Said became sad because he felt that the world had rejected him, and he created his own wish for revenge. In contrast, Hamlet tried to refuse this feeling; he thought that revenge idea was not the right choice, but the events pushed him to commit those actions. In both stories the secondary characters play an important role at the end, the way they deal with the principal characters made to change their mind.

My Analysis of Hamlet

Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself "too much i' the sun"; whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things.

Oedipus Rex

the play treats the murder of Laius as a detective story. Indeed, Oedipus speaks of tracks and traces, and the oracle gives little clue as to the events that will unfold. What Oedipus does as the tragic hero, however, is to speed up this revelation of events. Notable too is the literal plague that affects the city as well as the metaphorical ‘pollution’ within it: namely Oedipus himself. Indeed, in Athenian culture, the incest which Oedipus has committed - as well as the murder of his father - would have been considered both crimes against the natural order and crimes against the gods. Incest, of course, still carries a weighty taboo in most societies today. Because he fathered a child with his mother, he has engendered a plague on Oedipus' kingdom, Thebes, which has rendered the women sterile.

The Lottery

The Lottery, ironically gives the lottery a bad meaning. The lottery in this story is used for a public stoning, contrary to the first thing that comes to a reader's mind when they think of winning the lottery; a big sum of money. The reader sees both literal and metaphorical meaning of this story because for one it shows for face value what the entire story is about, and hidden behind it is the notion of the scapegoat being picked like a lottery number. The setting of the story in respects to the story's environment served to illustrate the mood of that particular time in the story. It serves a small role in words, but adds detail to enhance the feeling the reader gets when reading the story. Essentially, this story is told in the limited omniscient point of view. The histories of selected characters were told, but the thoughts of the characters were omitted from any part of the story. The point of view is used to conceal what is going to happen next.

Araby

In James Joyce’s short story "Araby," the main character is a young boy who confuses obsession with love. This boy thinks he is in love with a young girl, but all of his thoughts, ideas, and actions show that he is merely obsessed. Throughout this short story, there are many examples that show the boy’s obsession for the girl. There is also evidence that shows the boy does not really understand love or all of the feelings that go along with it. You do not usually remember every minute detail of someone unless you are very intrigued by them. Also, note the way he describes her hair as "soft rope." This shows the intricate way the boy views her. Another way you can see the young boy’s obsession for the girl is through his actions. Every morning, he waits for the girl to appear, and then he follows her. The way in which the boy waits for the girl definitely shows that he is obsessed with her.

My point of view of A & P

The story "A & P" by John Updike is a tale of a young man who lets his desires and his anger get a little too far ahead of him and in the end winds up quitting his job. The main character of the story is Sammy. An eighteen year old boy who live in a suburb outside Boston who works at an A & P Supermarket. Sammy seems like an average boy who seems a tad bit tired of the regular customers who come into his store. A & P is a story that traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from childhood to maturity. The protagonist, Sammy, is faced with a difficult dilemma, and comes to realize a universal truth about human behavior. Sammy comes to understand that the world is an unusual place and that irrational choices based on impulse are not the best way to solve personal issues.

Invisible Cities

My reflection about the story Invisible Cities is that all those place have been forbidden by the people. All these cities have many thing in common, they almost are inhabitants, all of them are destroyed, and they had have some kind of tragedy, like Armilla and Ersilia. I think the author is trying to describe the cities that are call cities because they have some dirty street and rubble like building. These cities were founded a long time ago. Cities like Olinda reflex the architecture of the time, some of this cities were construted in circle form. There are many cities like those around the world waiting to be recostructed or at least be the city that they were.

Our ethnic culture

There are many kinds of cultures all have special things that unlike the other. Language, customs, food, celebration, and many others are characteristic that differ a culture that otherwise. The Asian Culture believe in the animals each year have a different animal. Each animal represent a symbol. For example, the dragon represents power and knowledge. The African believe in magic and mysterious gods. America has many kind of culture; the food is a symbol that represents the different society in E.U. I think all of us have a reason to be proud of our ancestors.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was one of the must terrible events in War World II. Million people died in the fields murdered by the Nazis. These events marked the life of many Jewish families. Other groups were persecuted and killed by the regime, including Gypsies, Soviet, particularly prisoners of war; communists; ethnic Poles; other Slavic peoples, the disabled, homosexual men, political and religious dissidents. This stage of the story has been in the minds of many people who saw their fathers, mothers and children die. The best thing we can do is teach to our future generation about this tragedy.

A difficult election

The writer of “Cinematypes” is undecided about which couple likes more. The three guys have different behavior they like different things. Many of us had been in the same situation somewhere in our lives. Sometimes is so difficult to decide what we like or want. I think we have to choose what we think is better for us, even is we take the wrong decision. Indecision is part of our live every single person have an indecision idea in his or her main. Regarding the reading I believe that the couple that she wanted most was the last one, because he is on whom she is speaking with more intense.

Why the dinosaurs disappear

Some of the theories explained in the essay “Sex, Drugs, Disaster, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs” do not have evidences to prove it. How can we know that died by massive overdoses of some kind of poisons or they died by sterilization of male? There are not facts about it, but one theory has evidences. This theory says that a large comet or asteroid struck the earth and killed all kind of live in the planet. The evidence of this event is near of Florida, in the Caribbean Sea, where there is a hole cause by a large impact. There are another theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs, one them say that the temperature star to decreased under cero point and another one say that the dinosaurs did not disappear they just evolved to the animals we know today.

I have the same dream

I think Martin Luther King Jr. was a big leader to his people. He could unit them to fight for their rights. He did not fight just for the black people, he fought for the immigrants and people who did not have the same rights. During many time the black and immigrant people could not vote, they couldn’t go to the same schools that the white people, they couldn’t even sit in a public bus. Today thanks to Martin all of us live with the same rights and in peace, but there is another fight about the immigrants right, people that work hard everyday and they do not have documents.

College Pressure

Every year college students have to deal with pressure. There are too many kind of pressure. Some students have many problems with the money .For example, the Financial Aid represent many of the problems, sometimes many students do not received the money, so they have to work for pay the classes . Other kind of pressure is the time; the problem is that many students do not know how to manage their time. The good grades and pass the classes are other pressure for the students. They have to study hard and do their best to past the class, but sometime that is not enough. The college pressure is very difficult to handle, but that is the price of a better future.

Figthing with my girlfriend

All the weekend I go to the movie, but sometimes I fight with my girlfriend because she wants to see a horror movie. I do not like those movies because I prefer to see a movie with more argument in set of horror. I think the horror movies are stupid because it just about kill people and many times do not scar me. At the begging of the horror movie we really guess the final. I prefer the comedic, action, and adventure movie. Many times in the horror movies the actors are the worst and the movie have a low budget. As a solution, I say to my girlfriend that if she wants to see the horror movie she has to pay for that.

Work with customer

Sometimes we complain about how we had been served. There are many reason for make complain. Some people did not like how they were cared or they did not like the food, in case of a restaurant. In that case we can complain, but other screaming people complain for stupid things. Many times the people that deal directly with the customer have to face this kind of people, the complaining costumer. Some situation are very difficult to handle, for instance, if a customer order a little steak cooked and you make the food, but he does not like and he want it less cooked, for the next hour he order to you make the order again three times. The last time you personally take to his table a steak directly from the freezer. I know how that feels because I worked with customer during one year.

Do you really want to get married?

Married is one of the most important moment in our life, but how do we know that we are marring with the correct women? That is a question that I had not found the answer yet. I think that we have to live a few years with that person before we decide to married. In many cases the wedding ends with the separation because they did not know each other. There are many things that we have to result before the bib decision, where we going to live, what is our economic situation, and are we agree about how to have a child? As a result, I do not going to think about that yet, I have to graduate first and then we going to see.

a travel to remember

The last summer I visited the place when I born. It was very difficult to me because I three years ago that I had left my people. Since the first moment that the plane landed I felt happy because I saw my family again. The distance from the airport to my town is a little long, I could enjoyed the landscape with its green color, the trees was more high than never, but the miles was getting longer the closer I get to it. During those days I went to the beach, my old school, my friends, and my old home. I really take pleasure in this summer and I think to go again some day.

Borge and I