Penelope lively Essay Example for Free

Penelope lively Essay All 3 of the short stories carry a similar main theme, a theme which derives from the classic tale of Hansel and Grethal by the Brothers Grimm. A theme of disregard, procurement of the nieve and coincidentally, murder. The first of these stories is The darkness out there by Penelope lively. This story doesnt follow the theme as strictly as the others but it is loosely based upon it. The time set is not at first overly apparent. But it soon becomes clear that it was set not long after world war two, late 40s early 50s. Probably in Kent or some other country side place. The narrative is a story of generosity, which is shattered by evil. The goodness is symbolised by the children and the evil by the old woman. The crime is one of murder and the turning point is when the boy realises how evil the old woman is. In the next story, the lost hearts by M R James, the time set is a lot earlier around the time of 1811. Its a ghost story as opposed to the darkness out there, which is a 20th century fairy tale. Its is set in a mansion in Lincolnshire called Aswarby hall, a typical house in the reign of Anne. By the way of language structure, this story uses some colloquial language with generally longer, more complex sentences and metaphorical language than the first story, A lot of the vocabulary used would be classed as archaic or old fashioned. The narative carries a simular feel as the first story, the child trusting the witch character, and be procured into a trap. But the ending differed from the first as the criminal is punished. Leaving the story on a much higher note than the first. The final story is The landlady by Roahl Dahl. More a horror story than a fairytale, but there is still an element of procurement. Set in a picturesque town called Bath, more than likely in the 1950s. There are only two main characters in this story, there is a one Billy weaver, who plays the part of the innocent victim and there is a seemingly sweet old woman, who plays the witch character. The use of English is, in the main, standard and the colloquial language of the time would be considered as standard to a younger generation. When signing the guest book, Billy realises that something foal was afoot. He recognises seeing both the names in the paper under a murder column, this is the turning point. At the end of the story, we are made to believe that he is also poisoned, but this is not confirmed by the cliff-hanger ending. The darkness out there and the landlady are both set in the 20th century, This is made clear in the darkness out there by many lines, the main giveaway being a German plane came down there in the war, I am sure that we are all aware that German planes would not have came down in England, in the 19th century. And the time set is proven in the landlady by the line probably lost a son in the war. This point of proof could be arguable, there have been wars in both centauries which she could have lost her son in, but only the wars in the 20th century which stated compulsory enrolment. The lost hearts is set in the 19th century, there is much proof of this and it is apparent right from the beginning. The line in September of the year 1811 makes the time setting of the 1800s unarguable. There is of course further evidence to suggest this, the post chaise in line 4 and of course the more archaic language used such as as far as I can ascertain and tinged with the sort of melancholy. Both the C20 stories carry the same style as far as the use of Standard English with a little colloquial language of the time. They are both written in a more modern style, with shorter and less complex sentences than more classical pieces of writing; And a big chest, jutted under washed out jerseys. Of the modern story, rather than It was as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a post-chaise drew up before the the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of Lincolnshire. If a theme had to be assigned to the stories, the theme would be procurement in each story, but if it was to be a style that would be assigned, the styles would vary. The darkness out there would be a murder/ thriller story. The landlady would defiantly be a 20th century fairytale. And the lost hearts would be more difficult to determine. It is a style of murder, fairytale and horror, with a hint of science fiction. I have touched on the archaic language used by James in a previous paragraph. He uses verbs and adjectives that would not be used so much today such as congruous, acquaintance and afore. Some of the language used in the other stories could also be described as now archaic. Words like spinney and lodgings. I feel that the only reason Liveleys and Dahls use of description appears quite simple compared to that of James, is because it uses adjectives we are far more familiar with such as fairly, wide, pretty and plump. Rather than adjectives such as purer and gently beating. As I have previously stated, all 3 stories carry a general theme of procurement, a theme which derives from the Grimms fairytale Hanzel und Grethel. It is clear in each story who plays the role of the wicked witch and who plays that of the innocent children. In the darkness out there, old Mrs Rutter plays thw witch character whilst the children play the innocent victims of procurement.

Turing Machines And Universes :: essays research papers

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites In 1936 an American (Alonzo Church) and a Briton (Alan M. Turing) published independently (as is often the coincidence in science) the basics of a new branch in Mathematics (and logic): computability or recursive functions (later to be developed into Automata Theory). The authors confined themselves to dealing with computations which involved â€Å"effective† or â€Å"mechanical† methods for finding results (which could also be expressed as solutions (values) to formulae). These methods were so called because they could, in principle, be performed by simple machines (or human-computers or human-calculators, to use Turing’s unfortunate phrases). The emphasis was on finiteness : a finite number of instructions, a finite number of symbols in each instruction, a finite number of steps to the result. This is why these methods were usable by humans without the aid of an apparatus (with the exception of pencil and paper as memory aids). Moreover: no insight or ingenuity were allowed to â€Å"interfere† or to be part of the solution seeking process. What Church and Turing did was to construct a set of all the functions whose values could be obtained by applying effective or mechanical calculation methods. Turing went further down Church’s road and designed the â€Å"Turing Machine† – a machine which can calculate the values of all the functions whose values can be found using effective or mechanical methods. Thus, the program running the TM (=Turing Machine in the rest of this text) was really an effective or mechanical method. For the initiated readers: Church solved the decision-problem for propositional calculus and Turing proved that there is no solution to the decision problem relating to the predicate calculus. Put more simply, it is possible to â€Å"prove† the truth value (or the theorem status) of an expression in the propositional calculus – but not in the predicate calculus. Later it was shown that many functions (even in number theory itself) were not recursive, meaning that they co uld not be solved by a Turing Machine. No one succeeded to prove that a function must be recursive in order to be effectively calculable. This is (as Post noted) a â€Å"working hypothesis† supported by overwhelming evidence. We don’t know of any effectively calculable function which is not recursive, by designing new TMs from existing ones we can obtain new effectively calculable functions from existing ones and TM computability stars in every attempt to understand effective calculability (or these attempts are reducible or equivalent to TM computable functions).

American Cultural History

There are many transformations that affected American life from 1940s-1970s various changes and developments occurred during these decades that influenced the culture of people in regards with sports, ,movies and the impact of reality TV to the people. First is in terms of sports, World War II has a great impact on sports since it able-bodied met between 18-26 years old who were expected to serve the military. There is a shortage on baseball bats and bowling pins but the professional sports is still encouraged to continue to improve the troops morale.In 1941, 2 platoon football was allowed and no substitutions are allowed except from injuries until fee subs was allowed in 1942 and the Army Navy game was played in Annapolis. In 1948, football was considered as the game of strategy. Basketball was not affected that much by the war. In 1946 the Basketball Association of America was founded which sooner merged with National Basketball League in 1949 and formed the NBA. Boxing was also in big money during these times because of gambling.Golf Associations were also founded in 1946 (Womens Professional Golf Association) and 1949 (Ladies Professional Golf Association). Moving to the 1950's people began to love sports even more and popularity is gained not based on social status but on the athletes capability. Television gave sports more fans and College football was widely followed. Professional golf was also popular and produced golf stars like Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer. In 1952 and 1956 Olympics is organized and the cold war between countries became very fierce.In 1960'2 Olympic games was held three times and produced gold medals and world records for Americans Otis David in 400m and Glenn Davis in 400m hurdles and the famous Muhammad Ali who won as light heavyweight boxer gold medalist. Palmers continuous championship in golf was also in 1960s. Television opened major changes to sports since business goes hand in hand with sports and exploits more profits in the s ports market. Professional athletes demanded to be bid and the right to market themselves to the highest bidder. This also made way for athletes to be product endorsers and print models.Movies during the 1940's were heydays since movie propagandas are more on essential industry for morale. Plots of movies has fairly narrow and predictable sets of morals and where villains are one dimensional like Germans and Japanese. Disney's animated career was also produced like Dumbo in 1941 and Bambi in 1942. Better role for black actors was also being fought during this decade. In 1952 3D cartoons made debut with Bwana Devil Cinerama and colors are use as special effects to lure audiences. in 1956 people began to realize that movies are too expensive and opt to stay home and just watch television.by 1960, musicals became movies like Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. the famous Marilyn Monroe died in this year and made her movie fans sad, Movies has themes in politics and comments on racial issu es like the Movie Dr. Strangelove. Sex becomes more explicit and occasionally non-traditional and Violence was also promulgated in this time that resulted MPAA to develop a new film code. 1970 is a big comeback for movies after Television's dominance blockbuster movies were produced in Dolby Sound and win the people's heart into watching movies again.Science-fiction films like star wars made top grossing films ever and disaster movies fascinates people as well. As the war ended in 1940, 5,000 black and white TV sets can be found in American homes and made people be entertained and informed at the same time. one popular radio show was broad casted on Tv entitled the Original Amateur Show and the slapstick comedy Texaco Star theater was also launched. Children's TV kicked off in 1947 in Kukla, Fran & Ollie which was followed by Howdy Doody Show.In 1950's television dominated the mass media and captured people's interest to stay in their homes and watch televisions as past time. More y oung people opt to stay at home for longer hours and watch TV rather than go out and go to school. People accepts that what they see on TV because it is an eye witness to the events that happens greater reliance on TV news is accepted by viewers as credible sources of information. In 1954 the black and white TV became colored in broadcast and th American family loves soap operas and variety shows.The second prime time cartoons The Flintstones was offered in 1970 and appealed both to young and adult. The Andy Griffith Show serves as the epitome of prime time family tv while situational comedy like The Beverly Hillbillies arises as Sitcom. humor was revived in Laugh in during the late 1960s. The television leads to social satire issues and other controversial issues like abortion, race and homosexuality. It mirrors reality and how people treats such issues. TV miniseries that shows greater appreciation of whites was shown in Roots.The American contemporary family was portrayed in The Brady Bunch and gave us a glimpse of reality about American families. News are relatively publicized to feed information to people like the Watergate scandal produced by Corporation for Public Broadcasting and also made Sesame street to cater children's entertainment. The television set has become one of the common source of knowledge and entertainment nowadays. Since it was made available by the late 1930's it has become a common household communication device up to the present times.As innovation continues, this electronic device disseminates information and has strongly influenced the viewers in many aspects. Through continuous innovation in television programming, people learned to appreciate what has been shown in their TV screens and eventually lead to imitation and social influence when dealing with other people. Reality is necessarily manipulated when events and people are relocated into news or prime time stories. The media can impose their own logic or assembled materials in number of ways including emphasizing certain behaviors and people and stereotyping.Television can distort people visually through camera perspective and other techniques. Rhetorically, people can be portrayed with different labels. One of the most obvious ways in which media content structures a symbolic environment is simply giving greater attention to certain events, people, groups and places than others. The reality television has also attracted criticisms from those who feel that the occurrence of this genre of television has come at the cost of scripted programming.But whatever many critics and people would say, still, reality television shows impart social values, attitudes and behaviors to its viewers. People cannot avoid the truth. It will come in both positive and negative sides of life. As far as our society is concern, this is the balancing nature to reach progress and continue to evolve along with its people and culture. Reality Television is the visible evidence of p rogress and a medium of change to any kind of society but it could also bring the negative aspects in the society.To adapt it or not, it is still the real world that we are living in and the real mind that goes on deciding. People could imitate behaviors that they saw; those behaviors would be reinforced and therefore learned. Real, Whether reality TV ultimately fades into television history or continues to evolve with the medium as a unique genre, for over fifty years it has offered interesting, often controversial entertainment. Reality TV, debates the social, psychological, and ethical impact of reality TV as they explore and gives us fascinating aspects of American entertainment culture.

Christinaity In Middle Ages Essay - 1143 Words

Christianity in the Middle Ages Christianity played a major role throughout the Middle Ages in society and politics. The Middle Ages, classified from 600 AD to 1350 AD, was significantly effected by Christianity because of the impact it had on the daily lives of people of the time. The beginning of the Early Middle Ages, after the Fall of Rome in 476 AD and the period known as the Dark Ages, the reorganization of the empire brought a desire for faith and religion, primarily Christianity. This trend of Christian importance was apparent until 1350, when the Black Death caused the end of a systematized era. The church is often viewed, during this period of time, as a center of corruption, greed, and evil, with materialistic popes and†¦show more content†¦He was young and incapable, and gave the papacy a bad name by acting sinfully. The people lost respect for the church, and could no longer view it as the ideal way of life. These views were altered in the High Middle Ages when the papacy became increasingly p owerful in a prosperous time. The centralization of the church enabled Christianity to revitalize the spirit and faith of the Church. The church was organized by several reforming movements of the cluny, monastery, and papacy. Corruption was cleansed by new clerical laws, in addition to the canon law, that banned simony, clerical marriages, and immorality in the church. The succession of popes became more favorable because the expectations of the pope were heightened, as he was seen as a leader of faith having the grandest morals. Pope Gregory VII brought hope to the people by wanting to establish quot;right order in the world,quot; and this stimulated people to regain faith in Christianity. Christianity influenced art, literature, and education. Art and architecture were ways to demonstrate Christian belief through divine cathedrals, paintings of biblical scenes, and portraits of popes. Charlemagne initiated the increase of literacy importance by instituting schooling in monastic c ommunities. Changes in education during this time period were the foundation of cathedral schools, interests in ancient texts, and the education of the common people with the