God and The Common Good Approach : Allowing Evil to Demonstrate Empathy

At the point when one ganders at the abominations on the planet today and the model utilized by Johnson of the honest newborn child consumed in a structure, a typical response is compassion and compassion. In the event that Johnson demands seeing God as a human and attesting that an individual would not permit such abomination, at that point it is helpful to see approaches taken by moral, moral on-screen characters on the planet today. Taking a gander at the Common-Good methodology, we may affirm that with the goal for us to have characteristics, for example, sympathy, empathy, and other redeemable attributes, we should have circumstances in our lives that bring out these qualities.Without agony and enduring, there is no requirement for these positive characteristics, in this way, the contention that God isn't acceptable doesn't matter. His position is to guarantee that men can turn out to be acceptable willingly. Johnson would contend this methodology compares to permitting men to g et detestable on their own unrestrained choice, also. In any case, this is the embodiment of unrestrained choice and of the Common-Good methodology, we should have the option to see both great and malevolence to conclude how to best accomplish a general public that can battle this certainty of free will.Therefore, God can be taken a gander at as human, at that point human ways to deal with morals and the benefit of all must be used, so under the Common Good methodology, God is acceptable. The Common Good methodology basically manages a thought that singular great is compared and guaranteed with open great and that individual, decent attributes ought to be shared as a network in a sound manner. Along these lines, goodness, isn't acceptable in the event that it isn't shared.To apply this to check Johnson’s contention, it tends to be stated, at that point, that so as to perceive great to share it, we should likewise have the option to perceive terrible or â€Å"evil†, so as to realize how to counter it in a universe of through and through freedom. â€Å"Appeals to the benefit of everyone encourage us to see ourselves as individuals from a similar network, pondering expansive inquiries concerning the sort of society we need to become and how we are to accomplish that society† (Velasquez, et al, 1996, 2).Johnson’s contention to this would be that similarly as there is an envisioned God that advances great in the activities of man regarding unrestrained choice, there could without much of a stretch be a shrewd God that does the inverse. â€Å"For model, we could state that God is malicious and that he permits choice with the goal that we can uninhibitedly do underhanded things, which would make us more really fiendish than we would be whenever compelled to perform insidious acts† (Johnson, 1983, 88). This contention against through and through freedom doesn't commend Johnson’s request that we take a gander at God as a human being.Just as social orders and gatherings endeavor to improve networks, there are gatherings, who plan to carry out malevolence things and conflict with the benefit of all. On the off chance that God is just human, at that point God can dare to dream that others will decided not to do detestable with their unrestrained choice. All in all, Johnson is defective in taking a gander at God as though God is human, at that point connecting brutal characteristics or superhuman qualities to activity or inaction. On the off chance that God is made of human characteristics, at that point there will be imperfections in even God’s own self and design.But, with the request of Johnson to guarantee God as human, at that point we can essentially take a gander at moral human drew nearer to great and abhorrence. We can be cheerful that with the Common Good methodology that ethical on-screen characters will make the wisest decision with the possibility that God would act in this equivalent way. References Johnson, B. C. â€Å"The Problem of God and Evil† in The Atheist Debater’s Handbook. (1983). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 99-108. republish. Velasquez, M. , Andre, C. , Shanks, T, Meyer, S. J. and Meyer M. â€Å"Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making† in Issues in Ethics (Winter, 1996). 2-5.

A Clean Well-lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway Essay

â€Å"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place† by Ernest Hemingway â€Å"A Days Wait† by Ernest Hemingway â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber† by Ernest Hemingway â€Å"Indian Camp† by Ernest Hemingway â€Å"Soldier’s Home† by Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway has given us the absolute best writing of the twentieth century. He has been perceived as of late as probably the best essayist ever, and the impact his work has left upon us is contrasted and that of Shakespeare’s. His extraordinary achievement could be expected, to some degree, to the way that characters in his writing lead lives which reflect his own from various perspectives. Abstract pundits have named these equals â€Å"code heroes,† and have introduced rules with regards to what ways of life they lead in Hemingway’s stories. I wish to show similitudes within the sight of these specific, uniform qualities that are regular among Hemingway’s code legend in the accounts, â€Å"A Clean Well-Lighted Place† and â€Å"A Day’s Wait,† both by Ernest Hemingway. The particular components that make up a code legend are as per the following: (1) â€Å"Eat, drink, and be joyful, in light of the fact that tomorrow you may die.† (2) â€Å"When you’re dead, you’re dead.† (3) â€Å"Avoid passing at all expense, however don’t be hesitant to die.† (4) â€Å"Always be taught, never show emotion.† (5) â€Å"Grace under pressure.† (6) Nada idea †a code saint isn't happy around evening time. They become generally dynamic during murkiness, since they dread it and attempt to keep away from it consistently. In the short story, â€Å"A Day’s Wait,† the nearness of code legend characteristics is clear in the musings, words, and activities of Schatz, the primary character in the story. Schatz is a little kid who accepts that he is going to kick the bucket, yet he doesn't fear it. Rather, the kid lies in bed and takes it. He comprehends that passing is an acknowledged reality as opposed to a troubling end for a code saint. Schatz compels himself to be solid for his dad. He lets him know, â€Å"You don’t need to remain in here with me, Papa, on the off chance that it pesters you.† Schatz keeps on substantiating himself as a code legend by continually smothering any feeling that he is feeling. He not even once shares with his dad the gigantic unrest that is available inside himself. At the point when his dad asks him how he believes, he just answers, â€Å"Just the equivalent, so far.† This is a sufficient answer for a Hemingway code saint since he generally feels the nearness of an undying harmony that is control. He realizes that he should show a steady graceâ under pressure. Schatz exemplifies these qualities, and in light of the fact that his coded conduct is verifiable, but since he isn't a fighter at the front or a man with a devastating physical issue which no longer permits him to appreciate life, he is just a kid of nine years. Schatz shows a beauty that most grown-ups can not understand. He is resolved to show an enthusiastic quality that is past his years. Likewise with the majority of Hemingway’s code saints, Schatz knows about the unbalanced inclination in which haziness presents. His dad advises him to hit the hay a few times, yet Schatz realizes that he should stay cognizant and make the most of his last long stretches of life. On the off chance that he permits himself to pass onto a powerless express that is rest, he realizes that he may not wake up. â€Å"I’d rather stay awake,† he tells his dad in the uneventful manner by which just a code legend can. The elderly person in the short story â€Å"A Clean Well-Lighted Place† additionally comprehends the stuff to be one of Hemingway’s first class. He drinks each night until he is tanked, in light of the fact that he realizes that today around evening time might be his last. He realizes that the world is a steady battle and that he should be victor, in case he lose the game. For once the game is lost, it's anything but a simple errand to play once more. In the realm of a code legend, there are no prizes for second spot. When the elderly person is done, he realizes that he can stay away for the indefinite future in the greatness which he once delighted in. In any case, he doesn't fear this. That would not be the style which suits him. Truth be told, we discover that the elderly person invites passing, â€Å"He draped himself with a rope.† He has a bit of leeway over the individuals who dread demise. He feels that he would be more joyful in death than throughout ever yday life. The elderly person demonstrates to us that he is troubled, however he can't show this. He stays honorable in his desolation and comprehends that it would not be â€Å"sporting† to end the game along these lines. His regard originates from playing the game well, for he is a code saint. Indeed, even in the plastered amaze that he should battle each late evening during his long walk home, he is gathered, a brightened warrior who gladly takes on the great conflict. â€Å"The server watched him go down the road, an elderly person strolling precariously yet with dignity.† The elderly person, as all code legends must, likewise precludes the nearness from claiming obscurity. Hemingway utilizes specific code components more than others in specific stories, and this is noâ exception. The short story â€Å"A Clean Well-Lighted Place† is totally founded on the nothing idea. The storyteller clarifies the old man’s requirement for a lit spot so as to by one way or another forestall the insufferable depression in which he will not capitulate to. Hemingway, in his virtuoso, comprehends this need in each one of us. In his portrayal of this light, he triggers a similar sentiment of warmth that the elderly person has developed to rely upon. The elderly person goes to that place in his adolescence wherein he recollects the newly washed ledge, the warm, fluorescent gleam of a grandmother’s kitchen around evening time not long before sleep time. Much the same as us all, he wouldn't like to head to sleep. He yearns to be wakeful and within the sight of that security. Numerous likenesses are seen between the code saints of Schatz, in â€Å"A Day’s Wait,† and the elderly person from â€Å"A Clean Well-Lighted Place.† Both have a quality which permits them to see demise in an unexpected way. They can see a bigger picture wherein they play the game well, however when they are through they should acknowledge the way that they can't return. This capacity to see passing is the thing that permits Schatz to acknowledge an early end, and furthermore what invigorates the elderly person the to gaze his creator in the eyes and kick the seat out from underneath himself. Both Schatz and the elderly person can wipe out the feelings which confuse the entirety of our lives. In the ownership of this quality, the two characters can concentrate totally on the errand which is close by. Schatz realizes that he should be solid for his dad, so he can sit around idly time on emotions. The elderly person likewise realizes that he has another reason in life than to advance cause. He is called to carry on with a real existence deserving of a code hero’s acknowledgment. He is called to play the game better than any other individual until the end no longer allows him to. These characters both power themselves to carry on an honorable presence. Schatz realizes that howling and continuing don't exist in the realm of a code legend. He realizes that the main way he can confront passing is with a similar disposition that he confronted every day of his reality. To surrender currently would lose the fight. The elderly person additionally realizes how to lead an existence of pride. â€Å"I wouldn’t need to be that old. An elderly person is an awful thing. Not generally. This elderly person is perfect. He drinks without spilling. Indeed, even now, plastered. Take a gander at him.† It is clear to the server that the elderly person is by one way or another constrained by an imperceptible power, an inward power, which doesn't permit him to give any impression aside from one of control, one of elegance. In conclusion, these two code legends share a regard for obscurity. This regard consolidates everything that murkiness speaks to. They can't fear obscurity, for it isn't in the idea of a code saint to fear anything, however they additionally can't overlook the inclination that murkiness gives them. In the short story â€Å"A Day’s Wait,† the conspicuous perception must be made that the kid not even once permits himself to get powerless in the unreadiness which is rest. The elderly person is so awkward with this helplessness that he lives out haziness underneath a roof light in a cafãÆ'â © corner. Schatz and the elderly person are instances of Hemingway code saints at their best. In each short story that Hemingway’s pen has graced, we see a character who can be viewed as gallant in a manner explicit to themselves and to Ernest Hemingway. Be that as it may, it is the point at which these single characters are introduced in the light of a correlation that it is conceivable to see just precisely what Hemingway was attempting to achieve in building up every one of them.

A Philosophical Assessment Free Essays

A Philosophical Assessment in Kauchak amp; Eggen: Chapter 7 (Examining Your Beliefs). Spear DeLong Of the four ways of thinking of instruction; Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism and Social reconstructionism, the one that appear to best accommodate my key convictions would be reflected in Essentialism theory. This is, on the grounds that I accept that the job of the state funded educational system is to show understudies fundamental components of information that at that point thus empowers the understudy to improvement basic reasoning abilities related with cutting edge basic reasoning. We will compose a custom paper test on A Philosophical Assessment or on the other hand any comparative point just for you Request Now These scholarly abilities must be applied after an understudy has picked up the information important to work successfully in the public eye, and simply after he comprehends that society would he be able to settle on basic choices identifying with that society. The difficulties recognized in the circumstance presented by the course book work out; â€Å"Decision Making: Developing Your Philosophy of Education†, can be examined through the point of view of this instructive way of thinking in that capacity: The essential reason of what are the obligations of the training framework and how we accomplish basic deduction addresses the issues introduced in the initial segment of this activity. The quintessence of understanding about one's thought process and settling on choices on, must initially be built up in the understudies mind, would be my assessment. Essentialism, is the possibility that bases on fundamental facts that must be learned with the end goal for understudies to connect with and take an interest in such initiates. Essentialism is a conviction that life is a progression of building squares and certain facts must be discovered that permits the understudy to accomplish headway and a comprehension of the general public and the way of life wherein they are settling on choice on. This way of thinking must likewise be taken a gander at in the light of our Christian world view and the Bible. The Bible must be the premise and impression of all philosophical truth. Paul cautions us in Col. 2:8, â€Å"Beware in case any man ruin you through way of thinking and vain trickery, after the convention of men, after the basics of the world, and not after Christ†. Despite the fact that not every single common way of thinking are beguiling and drawing us away from Christ, I accept that any that question the fundamental inhabitants of training set out in the sacred text to be in opposition to said and effortlessly disassociated. The fundamental guideline recognized by essentialists is that there are basic truth and those realities are to be conferred in the instructive framework. While supreme certainties are conveyed through sacred text and fundamental scholarly facts with respect to history, English, science, and writing are the reason for this way of thinking; one must recognize this, to be the fundamental obligation of an instructive framework, conferring absolutes, to be an essentialist. Other instructive ways of thinking that cultivate the way toward finding truth instead of recognizing truth must be perceived for what they are â€Å"vain deceit†. Another rule the essentialists would maintain, is that learning requires discipline and for the most part is practiced through difficult work. This is by all accounts adversely reflected in the circumstance introduced in the reading material. The understudies in the model appear to have been the result of a framework that doesn't instruct individual control and difficult work as prove in their disposition for a speedy arrangement and want to realize exactly what is required to get by. On the off chance that these understudies had been presented to a framework related with discipline and difficult work and that was the norm, questions, for example, â€Å"why do we need to get familiar with this stuff† would not have been acted and remarks such like â€Å"C’mon simply mention to us what you need us to know† shouldn't be made in light of the fact that understudies would have discovered that difficult work and order delivers generally positive outcomes. It appears that these understudies have been given and have not figured out how to function for their instruction. On the off chance that these primary standards had been ingrained into these understudies through a trained learning condition they would not have been left to their own devises as it appears these understudies have, yet would have built up a purposeful controlled technique to learning one that would have been estimated and demonstrated however testing. Additionally, in the circumstance introduced, there appeared to be a component of disregard related to the framework and the instructor. The component of accommodation to power has not been ingrained in the understudies. Paul lets us know in I Peter 5:5, â€Å"Likewise, ye more youthful, submit yourselves unto the senior. Yea, every one of you be subject to each other, and be dressed with quietude: for God resisteth the glad, and giveth effortlessness to the humble†, the component of power and the regard thereof has apparently not been built up in this learning condition. The essentialist perceives the customary educator focused way of thinking where the regard for power is the reason for the significance of the data being imparted. The giving of information, data, and abilities from the more established (probably more astute) age to the more youthful one is basic in this way of thinking. The teacher’s duty isn't just to grant those referenced components of essential instruction, yet in addition to ingrain regard for power, and good standards as considered adequate in a general public. The circumstance portrayed in said situation is by all accounts a reoccurring quandary perceived in our government funded educational systems today. This appears not to be a need to rethink the instructive framework, however a need to readdress jobs and duties. Returning to the standards of the originator of the essentialist instructive hypothesis, William C. Bagley is by all accounts the appropriate response. His premise standards of â€Å"the perceived right of a youthful understudy to the direction of an accomplished, mindful, and refined teacher†, would appeared to have settled the accepted demeanor of the understudies being referred to of non-significance of training. That â€Å"the granting of the beliefs of network to each succeeding age of children†, would have settled the issue of regard for the showing framework and educator and would have cultivated the sentiment of network and society. Having a particular program of studies that necessary careful quality, exactness, ingenuity, and great workmanship with respect to pupils†, would have set the priority and give the understudies explicitly what was expected of them. I would concur with Professor Bagley’s’ proclamation of â€Å"(American) essential ism is grounded in a traditionalist way of thinking that acknowledges the social, political, and monetary structure of American culture and schools ought do whatever it takes not to fundamentally reshape society†. I hold to a similar idea that American schools ought to transmit the conventional virtues and scholarly information and those understudies need to become model residents. I hold to the fundamental occupant that when an understudy leaves school that they ought to have essential abilities and a broad assortment of information, discipline and a viable psyche that at that point permits them to apply school building exercises in a genuine and commonsense world. At long last I accept the American educational system is in decrease as prove in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The aftereffects of these test indicated that just around 33% of American understudies showed capability in innovation and science. â€Å"Living in the past† is the expression I will use as some think about the way that during the 1950s SAT scores arrived at an unsurpassed high as reflected by the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), reviewing Adults 16-65 relating not to math and science however proficiency. As years pass by measurements keep on dropping. The present organization has guaranteed significantly additionally spending on their â€Å"Race to the Top† activity with appearing to be next to zero positive outcomes. Some will discover pardons for the decrease, however I can't help suspecting that the dynamic attitude identifying with current instructive methods of reasoning isn't really working and that an arrival to customary qualities and demonstrated hypotheses of training would be judicious to come back to. A philosophical model of training that mirrors the standards of extreme certainties don't change and that sound moderate acts of essentialism appears be the reason for this arrival. Instructions to refer to A Philosophical Assessment, Papers

Moby DickObsession, Evil and the Passion of Ignorance. - Free Essay Example

Abstract: This paper Moby Dick: Obsession, Evil and the Passion of Ignorance, argues that monomania is a passion of ignorance. It contends that this passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the ideal ego and the ego ideal. The ideal ego is the fantasy an individual has of themselves, a narcissistic illusion of completeness. It is a representation based on an image of the self fixed at the infantile period. The ego ideal is the goal of a process, a movement towards an idealized self based on internalised significant early role models, people admired and preferred in favour of the self. In monomania, the ideal ego seeks to eradicate the other, the ego ideal. This is an act of envy, an attempt to kill and steal the others good because it represents what one should be or could have been. Such an act is never conscious. It is a passion of ignorance. The saga of Captain Ahab and his obsessive desire to obliterate the Great White Whale is illustrative of this dynamic. The yearning for absolutes is a hall-mark of monomania. Monomania is a passion of ignorance and is to be found in the boundary between love and hate. It is inherently evil because it excludes and destroys reality. In monomania, ignorance functions as a parochial and universalised concept of reality, marked by a certainty and rectitude which enables the harming of others with humanitarian conviction and moral purpose. The passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the subject and the fantasy of himself. The ideal ego wishes to eradicate the other, the ego ideal, What is at the heart all psychopathological behaviour is an incapacity to communicate with aspects of the self that have, as part of the self protective mechanism of the psyche, been obscured because they are too painful to be addressed. At the time of obfuscation, the only perceived path for survival has been the isolation and dissociation of something intrinsic. Analytical psychology recognizes that there are dark recesses people carry deep within in which lurk forbidden secrets which are treated as unapproachable. These dark places and forbidden secrets are not passive, they pulsate with the presence of malignant, carnivorous forces that reek of fear and anarchy. It is no accident that the developmental arm of analytical psychology is preoccupied to the determining effects of family history, for it is in the family setting that people experience the strongest and most primitive feelings, where relationships take on their most stark and forceful forms. A persons experience within the context of family has its genesis at a time before coping mechanisms are developed, before and independent sense of security and stability has had time to consolidate. Analytical psychology understands that the individual is deeply affected by the net of past experiences. They impact on the way in which present experiences are assimilated or repressed. They determine what may be allowed to come to consciousness and what must be assigned to the unconscious. The unconscious is occasioned by a number of factors, by repression, instinctual inheritance, social conditioning and repressed trauma. It can be personal or collective. In all its aspects, the unconscious represents that part of an individuals psychic existence that is, by multiple strategies, consigned to function without conscious control. Thus analytical psychology attempts inexorably to draw one deeper and deeper into a journey of confrontation with ones self. It calls on the individual to overcome his defences, to transcend the bounds of secure systems he has established to keep full and immediate experience at bay. In the tale of Moby Dick, Ahab misuses his power, disregards the safety of his crew and the profitability of the voyage, even forfeits his own life in order to avenge himself on the whale who robbed him of his leg. He does this, all to avoid a confrontation with himself and his own vulnerabilities. The Story: The tale of Moby Dick begins with the enigmatic words of the narrator, Having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntary pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping onto the street and methodically knocking peoples hats off à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" then, I account it high time to get to see as soon as I can. (Melville 1992 p. 1) With these words Ishmael the story teller announces his intention to go to sea. He makes the journey to New Bedford, Massachusetts where he takes accommodation at a whalers inn, but as the inn is very full he finds himself sharing a bed with a stranger, Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Pacific. Queequeg is a cannibal from a South Sea Island. His strange physical form appears bizarre to Ishmael. He is covered in strange tattoos and apart from his alien appearance has strange habits and customs. Ishmael is terrified by the encounter but as time passes he is able to move beyond the outward exterior of Queequeg to understand that they are both men, and this strange creature from the South Seas, far from being a terrifying beast is human, and one with a particularly kind heart and generous spirit. The two men join forces and set out to seek work together as whalers. They secure work on the Pequod, a whaling vessel decked out with the bones and teeth of its victims, Peleg and Bildad, t he Pequods Quaker owners, tell them of their Captain, Ahab, who on his last voyage found that sperm whales are not defenceless victims, but creatures with teeth; Ahab has had his leg ripped from him by an enormous white whale. The hunted became the hunter and had struck back. The Pequod leaves the safety of the harbour in Nantucket on a bitterly cold Christmas Day, its crew a diverse mixture of nationalities and cultures. Days later, as the ship makes into warmer waters, Ahab finally appears on deck, balancing unsteadily on his prostheses carved from the jaw bone of a sperm whale. Ahabs intention: to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the great white whale who took his leg. To Ahab, this whale is the embodiment of evil. He must be killed and killed by Ahab. To this end he nails a gold doubloon to the mast and announces to all that the man who first sights Moby Dick will have the coin. Aboard one of these ships is a crazed prophet called Gabriel who predicts doom to all who pursue Moby Dick and the superstitious crew of the Pequod share their sea-stories of how those who hunted the whale met with ill fortune. It is not long before misfortune is seen and known by the crew. While butchering their catch, the harpooner Tashtego falls into the mouth of a dead whale which tears free of the Pequod and sinks. Queequeg dives after the drowning man, slashes into the slowly sinking head with his knife and frees the seaman. During another whale hunt, the black cabin boy Pip, jumps from a whaleboat and is left stranded at sea. He is rescued but the trauma renders him mentally disturbed. He is left mindless and uncanny, a prophetic jester onboard the ship. Still the hunt continues. One day, the Pequod encounters the whaler, the Samuel Enderby. Captain Boomer the skipper has lost an arm in a chance meeting with Moby Dick. As the two captains discuss the whale the contrast becomes evident. Boomer is happy simply to have survived his encounter, and he cannot understand Ahabs lust for vengeance. Queequeg becomes ill and asks the carpenter on board the Pequod to make him a coffin in preparation of his death but he does recover, and the coffin becomes the Pequods replacement life buoy. In expectation of finding Moby Dick, Ahab orders a harpoon to be forged and baptizes this harpoon with the blood of the Pequod harpooners, and his own. Although the Pequod is still hunting whales, it is the hunt for Moby Dick that always hangs over the life of the ship. Then, one day, Fedallah makes a prophesy regarding the death of Ahab. Ahab will see two hearses, the second made from American wood and he will be killed by hemp rope. To Ahab, this means he will not die at sea, for at sea there are no hangings and no hearses. A tropical storm encompasses the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. To Ahab this is a sign of imminent confrontation and success. To Starbuck, the ships first mate, it is a bad omen and he contemplates murdering Ahab to end the obsession. The tempest ends, but then one of the sailors plummets from the ships masthead and drownsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ a grave forewarning of what lies ahead. As Ahabs obsessive desire to find and destroy Moby Dick intensifies, the mad Pip becomes his constant companion. It is near the equator that Ahab expects to find Moby Dick, and it is here that the Pequod meets two whalers, the Rachel and the Delight; both have had recent fatal encounters with the Great Whale. The Captain of the Rachel pleads with Ahab to help him find his son, lost in the battle with Moby Dick, but Ahab has only one goal, to find and kill the whale. Days pass, and then, finally, Ahab sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched. Moby Dick rams Ahabs harpoon boat, destroying it but Ahab is saved by his crew. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted once more. The whale is harpooned but again, Moby dick strikes back and once again rams Ahabs boat. Fedallah is trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death. Starbuck saves his Captain by manoeuvring the Pequod between Ahab and the enraged beast. On the third day, the boats are launched once again and are sent after Moby Dick. The whale turns and attacks the boats, and they see that Fedallahs corpse is still lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. In the ensuing battle, Moby Dick rams the Pequod and she begins to sinks. Ahab, caught in a harpoon line, is hurled out of his whale boat to his death. The remaining whaleboats and crew are caught in the vortex of the sinking Pequod and dragged to their deaths. Ishmael, thrown from his boat at the beginning of the hunt, is the only man to survive. He floats, alone on Queequegs coffin, the only remaining flotsam from the wreckage, an isolated figure in a watery world. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (Melville 1992 p. 583) An Uncanny Tale In telling the story of Moby Dick, Melvilles narrator, Ishmael, engages in a process of repetition that brings the dead back to life. His narrator offers what appears to be a sober account of his real experience but in the recounting it is immediately evident that this experience is anything but commonplace. Melvilles combination of reality and the fantastic, the credible and the incredible, compel the reader to accept the narrative on its own terms. The tale confronts the reader with narratorial anxiety in both the telling of the tale and in the horror of its content. Melvilles narrative method exemplifies the de-familiarisation of the familiar, the domestication of terror that characterises the uncanny. Freud characterises the uncanny as that which arouses dread and horror; (Freud 1919 p. 339) it is that class of things which lead us back to what is known of the old and familiar. (Freud 1919 p.340) It is precarious, this combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, where the opposites of the homely, customary and congenial also denote the secret that is concealed and kept from sight. (Freud 1919 p. 347) We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings. That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary. Nevertheless, the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment in the double form of refusal and dissembling. At the bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary, uncanny. (Heidegger 1971 p. 53) Freud argues that one of the most anxiety-producing devices of the uncanny is the double. Freud considers the uncanniness of the double to be the effect of the egos projection of the object à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"outwardly as something foreign to itself. What is inside is experienced as coming from outside, (Freud 1919 p.358) split off and isolated through a process of repression and dissociation. The subject may identify with another to the extent that he is not sure which identity he is or he may substitute the extraneous self for his own. In the tale of Moby Dick it is this lack of difference which dominates Ahabs relationship to the whale. While Ahab may try to establish himself as a saviour, he too, deep down, is dangerous and destructive. It is this sameness that is problematic. When it becomes too obvious that the other is contained in the self, the other becomes an object for irrational hostility. In this dynamic, both the object (the whale) and the subject (Ahab) become doubles of e ach other in the psyche of the person who is enmeshed in the projection. The notion of the double always inspires the subject with dread and can be summed up as a dividing and interchanging of the ego. There is an inevitable cyclic repetition of the initial trauma. It is an inescapable loop until the doubling is concluded. Aboard ship, Ahab imposes an irresistible dictatorship in order to pursue his obsession. Moby Dick had injured him and that fact contravened Ahabs entire view of how the world should be ordered. The self-righteous, imposing Captain of the Pequod smoulders with the fires of hell. His all consuming pride and rage against the white whale blaze in the great speech before his crew where he proclaims, That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or the white whale principal, I will wreak my hate upon him Talk to me not of blasphemy, man, Id strike the sun if it insulted me. (Melville 1992 p. 167) Ahab cannot see Moby Dick for what the great while whale is, because the reality of the animal is subsumed under the passion of Ahabs projection. But because this à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"relationship is skewed, the rest of Ahabs world suffers. Ahab has no connection to any other person or thing beyond the white whale. It is inevitable that the whale proves to be his nemesis; it is the whale that inflicts retribution and vengeance, not Ahab. The Orphan With the first sentence of Moby Dick we are confronted with the complex figure of Ishmael. The narrative begins with the words Call me Ishmael. The name has come to symbolize orphans and social outcasts but it has another aspect to it. The word literally means à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"God hears. Ishmael, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, was the first son of Abraham, born to a slave woman, Hagar because Abraham believed his wife Sarah to be infertile. But when God granted Sarah a son of her own, Ishmael and his mother were turned out of Abrahams household. Isaac inherited the birthright from Abraham. Ishmael was left to die under a bush in the wilderness by his distraught and starving mother. But in her distress she cried out and God heard her cry and the cry of the child. 15When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. 19Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. 20God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. (Genesis 21: 15 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" 20 The Bible NRSV 1988) From a Judeo-Christian perspective Ishmael was an outcast, the result of his fathers failure to believe and obey YHWHs promise to give him a son through his wife Sarah. As a consequence, Ishmael was the one repressed and rejected. But Ishmael was heard and taken care of by God. Throughout his life, Melville was preoccupied with the imagery of orphans and in particular with the character Ishmael. In Mardi he writes, But as sailors are mostly foundlings and castaways, and carry all their kith and kin in their arms and legs, there hardly ever appears any heir-at-law to claim their estate. (Melville 2004 p. 139) In Redburn, Melville writes, at last I have found myself a sort of Ishmael on the ship, without a single friend or companion. (Melville 1957 p. 60) In Pierre Melville writes, so that once more he might not feel himself driven out, an Ishmael into the desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany him and comfort him. (Melville 1962 p. 125) Edward Edinger argues that Melville had an Ishmael complex which had two sources; personal life experience and identification with an archetypal image. (Edinger 1995 p. 23) The personal cause would be the insanity and death of his father and the ensuing hardships this caused. Melville was twelve and a half when his father died, close to the age of the biblical Ishmael who was thirteen. In addition, he was rejected by his mother, who favoured her first son. According to Arvin Newton, Melville, as an elderly man, once remarked to his niece that his mother had hated him. (Arvin 1950 p.30) The pain of his rejection is poignantly evident in the tale of Mob y Dick Most of the action is seen through the eyes of Ishmael. He will thus represent the authors ego (Edinger 1995 p. 24) Ishmael, the lone survivor of this misadventure is the story teller. At the outset of the story, Ishmael presents as one who is in pain and internal distress. He is impoverished, hostile, depressed and potentially suicidal. He heads for the sea, to Nantucket to find work on a whaler. In the past he has found sea voyages as a way of containing his internal conflict and pain. But before he can find a ship, his poverty forces him to find accommodation in a squalid inn, sharing a bed with a harpooner. When the harpooner enters the room in which Ishmael is sleeping he awakes in horror at the apparition before him, a man who appears to have just returned from the ministrations of a surgeon, his face covered with sticking plaster. But that is not the reality. The harpooner is a cannibal from the pacific, tattooed in his native islander tradition. He carries a tomahawk, a seal skin purse with the hair still attached and a shrunken head. The overall impression is alien, bizarre and terrifying to Ishmael. He watches from beneath the counterpane as the stranger uses the tomahawk as a pipe, then quietly turns into the bed with Ishmael. He is unaware of Ishmaels presence and reacts with instinctive aggression. In the fracas that follows Ishmael calls out in terror to the landlord for help. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! Save me! (Melville 1992 p. 25) Peter Coffin, the landlord, soothes the moment. He introduces the men to each other and Ishmael is suddenly aware that this frightening apparition is a person, with a name. Queequeg is no longer a nameless savage, a cannibal with a shrunken head and a death dealing tomahawk. The tomahawk is also a peace pipe, and he shares the smoke from this unique instrument with Ishmael. The tomahawk-pipe has now become a symbol for both life and death, a symbol of reconciliation and peace. In this initial encounter with Queequeg a transformation is begun in Ishmael. In symbolic terms, he has embraced, in the symbolic form o f Queequeg, both death and life as indivisible partners, and when he wakes the following morning he begins to see the world from a different perspective. Ishmael understands the mixture of life and death that Queequegs tomahawk-come-pipe represents, and realizes, at least in that moment, that such experience can lead to renewal. The Obsession, Ahab demonstrates the dangers of an all consuming focus; the object of his obsession is the solitary great white whale, nicknamed Moby-Dick by the whalers. On his previous voyage, Ahab had his leg ripped off by Moby-Dick, and at the Ishmaels story begins, he has sworn to take his vengeance by hunting down and killing the great whale. It never occurs to Ahab that he lost his leg while trying to take the whales life and while in the process of killing countless other whales for monetary gain. Ahabs obsession has more to do with what Moby Dick represents than with the great whale himself. He saw Moby Dick as the prey and could not cope with the idea that he was not omnipotent in this relationship, that he was outdone by another creature. As Ahab reasons in a fiery speech to the crew of the Pequod, all visible objects are like pasteboard masks that hide some unknown but still reasoning thing. Ahab hates that inscrutable thing that hides behind the mask of appearance. The only way to figh t against it, he proclaims is to strike through the mask! Moby Dick, as a mysterious force of nature, represents the most outrageous, malevolent aspect of natures mask. To kill it, in the mind of Ahab, is to reach for and seize the unknowable truth that is hidden from all people. He cannot conceive of the concept that there is a simpler reality; he is not the master of all other species. He sees his failure to be able to take life at will as a reversal of his role as the predator and therefore can only conceive of himself now as the one preyed upon. This he cannot accept and so is driven to destroy that which in his mind denies his appropriated reality. Ahabs insane obsession and hunt for Moby Dick describes the consequences of viewing the world as a mask that hides unknowable truth. It is Ahabs frustration with the limits of human knowledge and power that lead him to reject both science and logic and instead embrace violence and the dark magic of Fedallah his demonic advisor. Like Christopher Marlowes Doctor Faustus, he has made a pact with the devil. Thinking he is immortal, Ahab attacks Moby Dick, striking at the mask of appearance that supposedly hides ultimate truth. His devotion to the idea that truth exists behind or beyond the physical world forces him to destroy himself in the attempt to reach it. Ahab can only relinquish his illusion by dying, or killing the object upon which his illusion has rested. Ahabs ideal ego, that is the fantasy he has of himself as one who is in control and omnipotent, is in the process of destroying his ego ideal, that is, his potential as man, captain and hunter. He believes he must eradicate the evil of the whale, but in reality, because he is caught in this doubling with the whale, he is intent on murdering himself. His passion of ignorance has overwhelmed his reason, blinded him to his own creative potential. All that is left is the passion and it knows no reason People thus reduced inflict the traumatic pain of their void on others. The evil they engender is not just about destruction but emerges from the chaotic principle of pure drive which has loss at its centre and therefore must occasion more loss. The important point is not that the symbolism of what Ahab lost, but the symbolism of the loss itself. Revenge is only sought when there has been a great loss, a loss that is seen to embody an injustice, and an injustice imposed by an enemy over whom victory should have been assured. Ahab lost his leg to a beast, an inferior creature. His quest for revenge could just as easily have been instituted by the loss of an arm, a child, or a father. The loss implies inferiority to a foe that is deemed to be unworthy of such a victory. Revenge becomes obsession because only with revenge can the world become again that which supports the adopted perception of order. For Ahab, revenge can only be perceived as the re-imposition of superiority and ascenda ncy. It is the adoption of this delusional sense of what order is, that gives rise to the monomania that attends a thirst for revenge. Ahabs loss of limb is immediate and it is personal but despite losing a leg he can still walk, he can still captain, he can still go on a whaleboat and harpoon. It is the greater loss which is the mechanism standing behind the driving revenge and his monomaniacal pursuit of it. As if to be human is forever to be prey to turning your corner of the human race, hence perhaps all of it, into some new species of the genus of humanity, for the better or for the worse. (Cavell 1998 p.154) For this reason Ahab must inflate the object of his revenge and recreate it as something larger in context. To accomplish this, Ahab must imbue Moby Dick massive power, power beyond comprehension. By placing the capacity of evil upon the whale, Ahab can fool himself into thinking that Moby Dick is a greater being than he really is and therefore his own loss appears greater than it really is. For Ahab, the delusion attendant to the psychosis of revenge suppresses the reality that he is merely a man bent on attempting to restore his lost sense of superiority. This reality is replaced with a grandiose vision of one who is a redeemer for humanity. But it is not humanity Ahab is attempting to redeem; it is his own inflated ego whose ascendancy has been usurped. By imputing to Moby-Dick a demonic power he does not really possess Ahab, blinds himself to any reality of what Moby Dick actually is, to any real strength and intelligence that the whale possesses. This blindness springs not from mere ignorance, but from a consciously willed ignorance, from the desire not to know, from the ambition not to understand. In order to sustain his delusional conception of himself, he must appoint concomitant distortion to the world which surrounds him, and particularly to the object of his obsession. Ahab desperately wants Moby Dick to be inscrutable. He wants him to be a thing that is incapable of being understood, because that enables him to categorize his nemesis as sheer evil. Therefore he is compelled to refuse any effort at understanding and it is this iron-willed ambition to remain ignorant, to label this thing as ultimate evil that generates the ironic twist whereby Ahab himself becomes the ultimate danger, the evil which he imagines he is seeking to eradicate. It is Ahab who causes the complete destruction of all that surrounds him. Evil and the Passion of Ignorance Ahab desires to attach to Moby Dick all the evil that exists in the world. Moby Dick is a creation of his infantile envious omnipotent sadistic phantasies. Ahab himself identifies the ultimately personal source of what he sees as a universal evil when he says, It was Moby-Dick that dismasted me; Moby-Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day! (Melville 1992 p.166). Moby Dick took away Ahabs ability to literally stand on his own two feet. The loss of his leg can also be seen as a symbolic emasculation and that symbolism is made all the more apparent by the fact that Ahabs quest is for a sperm whale. Moby-Dick contains sperm; Ahab does not. In his quest for revenge, all of Ahabs creative potential is voided because he cannot accept that there is a reality that is greater and stronger than himself. It is in the attempt to deny the reality and existence of that which surpasses him that he divorces himself from his own creative life potential. Captain Ahab is both the psychotic parent in command of the infant and the infant overwhelmed with his own omnipotent phantasy. In the tale of Moby Dick, Herman Melville created a character whose motives of vengeance typify the behaviour of a psychotic person. Captain Ahab, in his delusion, could not allow Moby Dick to share the same space in his paranoid and infantile world. Ahab experienced the loss of his leg as a lethal wound that was potentially reparable only by a copy-cat act of vengeance taken upon the alleged guilty Moby Dick. That intangible malignity which has been there from the beginning Ahab did not fall down and worship it, but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it He piled upon the whales hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot hearts shell upon. (Melville 1991 p. 187) We Cannibals must help these poor Christians. The relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is the antithesis of the relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg develop a relationship that is based on the recognition of their dissimilarity and separateness. Ahab and Moby Dick are joined together by Ahabs projection and obsession. With Queequeg and Ishmael, the difference is something to be explored. The relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael has a germ of creativity; that between Ahab and Moby Dick is founded on destruction and butchery. The initial encounter between Queequeg and Ishmael provokes both terror and aggression. The landlord intervenes, calming the situation and bringing them both to an awareness of the necessity of living alongside of each other. This generates a realisation in both Ishmael and Queequeg that they are both men despite the visual and cultural dissimilarities. As time passes and conversation is enjoined, they begin to comprehend both their differences and their commonly shared objectives. According to the customs of Queequegs home, Ishmael and Queequeg are married after a social smoke out of the tomahawk pipe. Queequeg gives Ishmael half of his belongings, and the two men continue to share a bed. The tattooed body of Queequeg is much like the patchwork quilt that covers them both as they sleep. These tattoos are a written narrative of the universe but no one, save the prophet who inscribed them can decipher their meaning, not even Queequeg. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.(Melville 1992 p. 491) For Ishmael, Queequeg represents the dangerous and the forbidden for which Ishmael secretly yearns. Queequeg also symbolizes the explorative and adventurous aspect of Ishmaels personality. Once Ishmael recognizes this, his fears lessen and he embraces the savage into his life. Ishmaels initial hostility to Queequeg is a projection of the suppression of a part of his own personality. Exotic and unique, Queequeg represents the unknown. Ishmael is able to recognise this, to admit it, and to realise that his fear is due to ignorance. With this awareness comes the further realisation that he, Ishmael, must travel to the sea in order to gain life experience by exploring and embracing the unknown. The friendship between the two men, although troubled by prejudice and slow to develop into a full understanding of one anothers character, is solidified with their à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"marriage contract. They effectively become one person, illustrating the full integration of Queequegs otherness into Ishmaels personality. At the end of the book, Ishmael survives because of Queequegs coffin. In accordance with their marriage contract, Queequeg offers Ishmael protection from the sea-hawks, sharks and sea in the form of his coffin. In turn, Ishmael carries on Queequegs spirit, carved into the wood of the coffin. Queequeg represents that part of Ishmael which has been hidden and suppressed, and in knowing and admitting this, Ishmael is able to fully embrace that which he has lost. Ishmael is saved from the destruction of Ahabs obsession because he is the only crew member to realize that meditation and water are wedded forever, just as he and Queequeg are wedded forever. (Melville 1992 p.2) Symbolically water is a representation of both life and primordial chaos. But more than this, the vastness of the ocean represents the vulnerability of humanity. In contemplating the primordial nature of the ocean, the great representation of the human unconscious in all its vastness, terror and power, we begin to comprehend the reality of our own unconscious with all its fear, its power, its life potential. Like the power of the ocean the unconscious remains an awesome power to be reckoned with. It may be possible to harness the wind and the waves, but even so there is always the awareness that they have the power to crush and destroy. Ahab was convinced that the injury inflicted by the great whale was an iniquitous act by a malignant and evil predator that lurked in the ocean depths. Moby Dick had become the hunter and humankind the prey. For Ahab, Moby Dick is no longer a creature of the ocean defending its life, its very existence; it has become to him a demon from the depths of hell, the personification of evil itself whilst he has become the righteous avenging angel, expunging the evil that is entirely out there, personified in another. In the story of Moby Dick and Ahab, the heart of the evil lies not in who Moby Dick or Ahab are, but rather in the response of Ahab to his injury, his projection of all own pain and rage onto Moby Dick.. Ahab experiences not only pure jealousy towards Moby Dick but the envy of his existence. This is not ordinary jealousy, but the belief derived from very early infantile forms that the other enjoys a good that he will never attain. There is often confusion around the notions of envy and jealousy. Jealousy is the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"affect in a triangular situation when a person fears that something that they believe belongs to them has been or is about to be taken away. Envy however is an inherent hatred of that which possesses what is desired and which is seen to be a rightful privileged possession. Appearing devoid, of constructive value, envy becomes an evil to be restrained or renounced rather than a potential to be understood or developed. Essentially the difference between envy and j ealousy is that envy is between two objects, a dualism; in jealousy there is a third party present. From this perspective envy emerges as a desperate attempt to preserve ones unique sense of self against the terror of non-being. At this point, the place where passions of tyranny and hate germinate, there is no communal love, but a point of ignorance and a need to destroy. Ahab knows intuitively that in à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"destroying Moby Dick he must also be destroyed. In the repetition of an earlier trauma, Ahab has set a course towards his own destruction. Repetition is fundamental to the uncanny because it produces the effect of something being fateful, inescapable; it links the uncanny with the death drive. Ishmael, the lone survivor and narrator of this uncanny tale, believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. We can make the interpretation that his desire to live aboard a whaling boat is his version of committing suicide. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword. I quietly take to the ship. (Melville 1992 p. 1) And yet Ishmael, on board the ill fated Pequod with its obsessive captain, builds life and relationship with his bunkmate and companion, the seemingly primitive cannibal Queequeg. Ishmael survives by floating on Queequegs coffin, which had been transformed into the Pequods life boat. The coffin symbolizes not only resurrection but also the persistence and power of narratives. Queequeg has ensured the survival of his family history by carving the tattoos of his body onto the coffin. The archetypal tale of Moby Dick will also continue to live on through Ishmaels narration. Clinical material: Mathew is a truck driver, who is married with three children. According to Mathew he had developed an aloof relationship towards his wife and children because he feared rejection. Mathew presented as anxious and depressed after being involved in a road accident. He was charged with dangerous driving, pleaded guilty and was given a non-custodial sentence. After this incident Mathew attempted suicide and was admitted into hospital for two weeks. Through consultation with his local doctor he was referred for therapy. Mathew was an only child. His mother was extremely critical and unforgiving. The way that Mathew remembered it was that he could not do anything right and if he reacted in anger his mother could either become violent or retire to her bed with a severe headache. She would often make up stories of supposed misdemeanours or embellish them when his father came home from work. This had the effect of incurring a severe punishment from his father. His father often drank heavily in the evenings and, as a consequence made himself unavailable to Mathew. When Matthew was seven years old, his father left. It was at this time that Mathew began to obsessively masturbate. As an adolescent this obsession caused him overwhelming guilt but he found himself powerless against the force of the obsession. As an adult he would obsessively masturbate in secret and as a consequence made himself unavailable for intimate relations with his wife. In the course of therapy Mathew became deeply depressed. He was extremely harsh and punishing to himself and castigated himself on his lack of ability to even succeed in his attempt at self destruction. In our analytical work we discovered that he did not want to risk vulnerability through intimacy because he felt it would only lead to being disappointed, rejected and hurt again. He felt his mother had stolen something from him and he was terrified that any relationship of any consequence with anyone would take all that he had left. This emerged through transference as a refusal to share any anything but negative stories with me. I interpreted that he attempted to control me with a schedule of what he had to talk about in the session, thus keeping us in a restrictive but familiar relationship of power imbalance. It was a selective way of sustaining an illusionary state of control, safe from rejection or judgement. If he were to share his whole self with me he would feel vulnerable an d uncertain of my reaction. Matthew informed me, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Thinking about just talking to you about everything makes me anxious, like its too intimate or weird. I want to keep you where I can see you. This felt to me like an uncanny repetition of his early relationship with his mother. I interpreted this as indicating that by attempting to control me with what he shared, he felt that he could safely predict how I would see him. But to bring his whole self to the therapeutic environment would be too risky for him and he was unsure of how I would react to what I saw and heard. In Matthews own words, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"You might turn on me and take all that I have left. You might tell me to shut up or even worse you might get ill and die. In his phantasy Matthew imagined that if he brought his whole self into the room he might make me ill or might attack and kill me. This was a terrifying thought to him. Mathew did not want to risk vulnerability and dependence with anyone, especially me, his therapist/mother. Matthew held a profound uncertainty, mistrust and fear of any stability from a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"mother figure, the object of his focus, and believed the objects love to be fragile and easily lost. He used distance as a defence and then, feeling distant and alone, tried to please the object and keep it afloat. But in doing this, he felt cheated, burdened, enraged and murderous. The only way he had of keeping these feelings at bay was to obsessively masturbate. It was this obsession that had become his life buoy, a substitute for a relationship with a flesh and blood human being. The obsession had become the means by which Mathew sustained omnipotent feelings of power and control. In his phantasies he did not need an yone else. He was the one in creative control. Despite the illusion, Mathew was not in control and like Ahab it was his obsession that was controlling him. Like Ahab, he was in excruciating pain. In comprehending the power and genesis of this pain and obsession, I found Sandor Ferenczis paper, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child, (Ferenczi 1955 pp.156-167) a useful resource, In this work Ferenczi was concerned with the psychopathology produced in children who have experienced sexual and physical abuse by an adult. He argues that the power differential between adult and child in instances of sexual and physical abuse causes a paralyzing anxiety in the child. Children subjected to this abuse feel physically and morally helpless. Their personalities are not sufficiently consolidated to achieve any resistance or make any effective protest, even in thought. The overpowering force and authority of the adult abusers immobilizes and robs them of their senses and speech. (Ferenczi 1955 p. 162) Where this occurs argues Ferenczi, it compels children To subordinate themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor, to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; completely oblivious to themselves, they identify themselves with the aggressor. Through the identification, or introjection of the aggressor, he disappears as part of the external reality, and becomes intra instead of extra-psychic. (Ferenczi 1955 p. 162) Ferenczis concept of à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"identification with the aggressor is not to be confused with Anna Freuds use of the term. (Freud 1946 pp. 117-131) For her, identification with the aggressor is a defence mechanism commonly observed in the normal development of the super-ego. It occurs when an individual, faced with an external threat of physical aggression or verbal criticisms, performs a role reversal and internalises the aggressor so that the aggressed individual becomes the aggressor and is able to redirect physical or verbal aggression towards an external other or others. However, Ferenczis use of the term is quite different, both in character and outcome. There is no role reversal implied and the nature of identification is not as an aggressor in response, but as one who is assumes a compliance with the dictated role in a desperate attempt to be valued, affirmed and accepted. The sexually and physically aggressed child, whose personality is underdeveloped and who relies on th e adult for affection and physical nurture, has a need to gratify the adults desires. Ferenczis notion is that the childs identification with the aggressor means that the child assumes or incorporates, intra-psychically, an imago, identity or representation of him or herself created by the adult. The inherent need for approval and love from the parent figure generates acquiescence to the image that the parent figure projects, in a desperate attempt to be accepted and validated. I am not arguing here that the trauma Mathew suffered from his parents was sexual or physical abuse, but rather that Ferenczis insights are nonetheless extremely useful in understanding pathological behaviours in certain children who have been aggressed psychologically, even if there is no evidence of sexual or physical abuse, maltreatment or neglect. I am following Ferenczis argument, that being subjected to constant criticism and emotional isolation during childhood constitutes a trauma. It is my perception that Ferenczis theories describe accurately what Matthew suffered, that without any existing effective relations, he endured acute psychological suffering and pain in what can only be described as a lonely childhood, exclusively exposed to an overly critical and emotionally abusive mother. The story of Ahab and Ishmael reveals that there are choices in how we deal with pain of great magnitude. In the uncanny tale of à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Moby Dick, both Ahab and Ishmael are in agonising pain and yet while Ahab is murdered by his own obsession, Ishmael is saved by Queequegs coffin. Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hells heart I stab at thee; for hates sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and hearses to one common pool! And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear! (Melville 1992 p. 581) Ahab went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her and helmeted herself with it. (Melville 1992 p. 582) Conclusion In Moby Dick, Herman Melville creates a tale in which the focus is upon two men on that vast ocean: one is trying to repress and destroy a great white whale, the symbol of his pain, for its threat to his imagined supremacy; the other is exploring that great oceanic vastness for all its mystery, strangeness and life, symbolised in his marriage to Queequeg. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. (Melville 1992 p. 582) Using the imagery of Moby Dick, this paper has argued that monomania is spawned from a passion of ignorance. This passion of ignorance is situated at the boundary of reality, on the edge between the alternatives of love and hate. This boundary is actually the boundary between the ideal ego and the ego ideal, that is, between the fantasy that an individual has of themselves and the potential that is inherent in all that they have acquired in the journey of life. To choose the former is to necessitate the extinction of the latter, but it is a choice that carries with it meaningless pain, a pain without purpose. My clinical material presented a patient, Mathew, who was also in agonizing pain and in the grip of obsession. The agonizing pain of deprivation and non-existence offers a choice: to begin a heroic journey, like Ishmael, towards growth and individuation, taking faltering steps towards building a relationship with this greatest of fears; or to continue on the destructive and obsessional path towards death and non-being. At this uncanny tales dramatic termination, imagined and experiential realities are so tightly knotted they cannot be undone. The most tragic thing that can happen in life is not that we experience suffering and pain but that this suffering remains meaningless. The dramas done. Why then does anyone step forth? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" Because one did survive the wreck. (Melville 1992 p. 583) Bibliography Arvin Newton, (1950) Herman Melville, New York, William Sloane Associates. Cavell S, (1998) The Quest of the Ordinary, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Edinger E, (1995) Melvilles Moby Dick, Canada, University of Toronto Press. Ferenczis S, (2004) Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psychoanalysis, London, Karnac Books. Freud A, (1946) The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, New York, International University Press. Freud, S. (1915/1975) Observations on transference-love. S.E. 12, London, The Hogarth Press. Freud S, (/19201961) Beyond the Pleasure Principle, S.E. 18 New York London, W W Norton Co. Freud S, (1914/1975) Remembering, Repeating and Working Through, S.E. 12, London, Penguin Classics. Freud S, (1920/1975) The Dynamics of the Transference, S.E. 12, London, Penguin Classics. Freud S, (1919/2003) The Uncanny, London, Penguin Classics. Girard Rene, (1989) The Scapegoat, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Glein, William. (1962) The Meaning of Moby Dick. New York, Russell Russell. Heidegger M, (2001) Poetry, Language, Thought, London, Penguin Classics. Kristeva J, (1994) Strangers to Ourselves, Columbia, Columbia University Press. MCSweeney Kerry, (1936) Moby Dick, Ishmaels Mighty Book, Boston, Twayne Publishers. Melville Herman, (1992) Moby Dick, Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Classics. Melville H, (1957) Redburn, New York, Doubleday Co., Melville H, (1962) Pierre, New York, Hendricks House. Melville H, (2004) Mardi and a Voyage Thither, Whitish MT, Kessinger Publishing. Mumford Lewis. (1929) Herman Melville, Whitefish MT, Kessinger Publishing. New Revised Standard Version, (1988) The Bible, Michigan, Zondervan Bible Publishers. Porter Carolyn (1986) New Essays on Moby Dick, Ed. Richard Broadhead, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Woodstock Essay - 2226 Words

The muddiest four days in history were celebrated in a drug-induced haze in Sullivan County, New York (Tiber 1). Music soared through the air and into the ears of the more than 450,000 hippies that were crowded into Max Yasgurs pasture. quot;What we had here was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,quot; said Bethel town historian Bert Feldmen. quot;Dickens said it first: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Its an amalgam that will never be reproduced againquot; (Tiber 1). It also closed the New York State Thruway and created one of the nations worst traffic jams (Tiber 1). Woodstock, with its rocky beginnings, epitomized the culture of that era through music, drug use, and the thousands of hippies who attended,†¦show more content†¦At 23, he owned what may have been the first head shop in the state of Florida. In 1968, Lang produced one of the biggest rock shows ever, the two-day Miami Pop Festival, which drew 40,000 people (Tiber 1). At 24, Lang was the manager of a rock group called Train. He took his proposal for a record deal to Kornfeld at Capitol, and history began. The four met to discuss their idea at a high-rise on 83rd Street (Young 37). Lang reminisces, quot;They were kind of preppy. Today, I guess theyd be yuppiesquot; (Landy, Festival 29). The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was the name that they came up with. The four had decided to have a little party- inviting only rich stars that could afford the giant cover charge to gain entrance. By the end of their third meeting to discuss the event, the party had snowballed into a quot;bucolic concert for 50,000 people, the worlds biggest rock-n-roll showquot; (Obst 42). The four partners formed a corporation in March- Woodstock Ventures, Inc (Tiber 3). The Woodstock Ventures team scurried around to find a site (Makower 42). The 300-acre Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, New York, would have been perfect, but Roberts interjected, quot;The vibes arent right here. This is an industrial park. We gotta have a site nowquot; (Smith 28). Finally, Max Yasgurs pasture in Sullivan County, appeared. He was a prominent dairy farmer, and was pleased to Fanning 3 receive that $10,000Show MoreRelated Woodstock Essays916 Words   |  4 Pages Woodstock 1969 The Sixties were an exciting revolutionary period with great cultural change. Some people called it the â€Å"decade of discontent† (Britannica) due to the race riots in Detroit and La, and the demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Other people called it the decade of â€Å"peace, love, and harmony† (Woodstock 69). This decade was identified as such as a result of the peace movement and the emergence of the flower children. (Britannica) The sixties were about assassination, unforgettableRead MoreWoodstock1623 Words   |  7 Pages stamped an image on American culture† B. On August 15, 1969 in Bethel, New York, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was three day festival that was all about peace, love, understanding, music, and serious partying. C. It was a historic event that changed many peoples outlook on life and was a big part of what is known as the hippie movement. D. The Woodstock festival of 1969 is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal momentsRead MoreWoodstock 19691388 Words   |  6 Pagesthe flower children. Woodstock Music Festival took place near Woodstock New York on August 15, 16, and 17, 1969, and became a symbol of the 1960s American counterculture. Woodstock began with the following four partners: Michael Lang, the manager of a rock band, Artie Kronfeld, an executive at Capitol Records, and two capitalists, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman who supplied most of the money and the original idea. Their original plan was to build a recording studio in Woodstock, a small town in theRead MoreWoodstock Essay2087 Words   |  9 PagesWoodstock Woodstock Woodstock was a rock music festival that took place near Woodstock, New York in a town called Bethel. The festival took place over three days, August 15, 16, and 17, 1969. The original plan for Woodstock was an outdoor rock festival, three days of peace and music in the Catskill village of Woodstock. The festival was expected to attract 50,000 to 100,000 people. It was estimated that an unexpected 400,000 or more people attended. If it werent for Woodstock, rock and rollRead MoreEssay on Woodstock1677 Words   |  7 PagesWoodstock One didn’t simply go to Woodstock: one lived through it. In August 1969, the Woodstock Festival was the largest counterculture event ever staged, attracting some 500,000 people and featuring many of the country’s top acts. Two decades later, Woodstock has come to mean more than just â€Å"three days of fun and music†; it symbolizes a time of community, exuberance, and intensity since lost. Woodstock festival gave power to the youth, united people of all ages, races, andRead MoreWoodstock Research Paper1800 Words   |  8 Pages8 Apr 2011 Woodstock: Peace, Music, and Memories In the summer of 1969, a music festival known as â€Å"Woodstock† took place for three straight days in Upstate, New York with thirty-two musical acts playing, and over 400,000 people from around the world coming to join this musical and peaceful movement. Woodstock started out being a small concert, created to promote peace in the world. Now, Woodstock is still being celebrated over 40 years later. This three day music festival represented the perfectRead MoreThe Woodstock Music Festival in 1969887 Words   |  4 PagesWoodstock 1969 In August of 1969 at Bethel,New York, Woodstock was born. The three day festival was full of music,art,peace,love and crazy dancing. Woodstock was one of the most historic events of the 60s. Woodstock was a large event in the 1960’s that had both positive and negative events. At the festival many musicians that we call legends today performed at this festival and the ones who turned it down not knowing how big it was going to turn out sooner regretted it. The festival became so popularRead MoreEssay about Woodstock 19691075 Words   |  5 Pages The Woodstock of 1969 was a revolution in itself and responsible for redefining the point of view, respect, and attitude of the so-called quot;counter-culturedquot; youth of the late sixties. The attendants of the festival were youths from around the United States in ages ranging from 17 to 26. The overall mood of the festival was very relaxed and happy. Although there was a minimal amount of violence at Woodstock, there were financial problems, drugs, nudity, and traffic jams that seemedRead More Woodstock 1969 Essay1298 Words   |  6 Pages Woodstock ‘69 Many large concerts occurred throughout America in the summer of 1969, but none were as well known and symbolic as Woodstock. Its message was clear; three days of Peace and Music. Its impact on America’s culture and society as well as its youth will not be forgotten for many years to come. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Four men named Michael Lang, Artie Kornfield, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman originally established Woodstock. The men’s initial idea for the festival was to promoteRead MoreWoodstock Research Paper1110 Words   |  5 PagesResearch Final Woodstock 1969 Every memory of the summer of 1969 is connected to, in one way or another, the historical event, Woodstock. The festival could not have left more of an impact on the â€Å"hippie† generation anymore than it did those three days of music and peace. The generation of the time wanted nothing more than what they got out of Woodstock. Today, people still look back on the festival and think of how well it made history without the expectance of doing so. Woodstock, one of the most

Bartleby Analysis Essay Example For Students

Bartleby Analysis Essay Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. quot;Ah Bartleby, Ah Humanity. quot; (Page 140, Herman Melville) This is the key to Bartleby, written by Herman Melville, for it indicates that Bartleby stands as a symbol for humanity. This in turn functions as a commentary on society and the working world, for Bartleby is a seemingly homeless, mentally disturbed scrivener who gives up on the prospect of living life. However, by doing so Bartleby is attempting to exercise his freewill, for he would quot;prefer not toquot; work. His relationship to the narrator is thus significant, for as he attempts to exercise his freewill he is breaking from the will of the narrator and the normal progression of life. However, this attempt to exercise his freewill and break loose from the confines of typical societal functions, isolates Bartleby from society, which in turn places him in a state of depression and soon there after, death. Ultimately, by having Bartleby quot;prefer not to,quot; Melville is commenting on the role of humanity in the work force. If man attempts to break free of his role and exercise his own freewill then he is severing himself from humanity which in turn will lead to depression and perhaps death, for he will have nothing but a wall always obstructing him. From the beginning Bartleby is isolated within the confines of his work place. quot;I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice.quot;( pg 111) In this quotation the narrator put Arnold, Page 2 up a screen to separate his office from Bartlebys, which isolates him from the other members of the staff which thus isolates him from humanity. However, this is not the end of the isolation for he is not only detached from those around him, but society as well. ;quot;I placed his desk close up to a small side window, a window that had originally afforded a view of certain grimy backyards, but which commanded at present, no view at all. Within three feet of the pains was a wall.;quot; (pg 110-111) This quotation demonstrates Bartlebys total isolation from society, for even his window, usually a form of escape, traps Bartelby behind another wall, which thus reinforces absolute isolation. Ultimately, every aspect of Bartlebys life further expounds upon the motif of solitude. Bartalbys attempt to exercise his freewill eventually leads him into an even more alienated state as he estranges himself from his coworkers and his boss, the narrator. This resulted from a refusal to follow the orders of the narrator, for he refused to work or even communicate with him. His only response soon became quot;I would prefer not to,quot; which shows his lack of involvement and in turn his decision not to interact in society, for he gave up what little life he still had. Ultimately, what he was doing, was preferring not to live, but instead just exist. Melville, is thus commenting on the work force by demonstrating through Bartlebys continual descend into the abysmal, society confines you behind walls and that if you give in and choose to stop living you will waste away as Bartleby did. Consequently, Bartleby after having alienated himself so fully was then left to his own devices. ;quot;Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere.;quot; (pg 132-133) He was deserted completely, for he was no longer living. Arnold, Page 3 He continued to breathe, he continued to exist, but he was no longer of any use to society. As he severs himself from humanity, Bartleby is unaware of the consequences. However, these consequences as displayed by Melville, comment upon the impact that the work force can have upon mankind. Through Bartleby, he demonstrates that once you give up on life, everyone around will give up on you in turn, as the narrator did with Bartleby, for you have become an obstruction, much like the walls surrounding Bartleby. .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .postImageUrl , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:hover , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:visited , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:active { border:0!important; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:active , .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499 .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .uae706313c043d0557ee3e818df2ed499:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Hi, My Name Is Katie Hughes And This Is My Friend Sarah Seal. We Live Essay In the end, his self-will was what led him to death. For his decision to withdraw from society and further seclude himself led to the disintegration of his soul. He lost all desire

Speech of Distinctively Visual free essay sample

Hi everyone Today, I would like to show you how distinctively visual elements in my chosen text such as: gesture, composition, emotion expression, color and lightning†¦ can be used by the composer to affect an audience’s response to these themes- Suffering Poverty Love The distinctively visual text I have chosen is one in a series of photographs of Agent Orange victims after the Vietnam War. This photograph was taken by an anonymous photographer which shows an Agent Orange affected child being bath by his mother. The photographer had purposely taken this photograph to illustrate lives of people who have got the affection of Agent Orange. The photographer has skillfully captured the emotional expression in the photo, and effectively used the color and lightning to suggest how much they must have suffered from Agent Orange. The photo is mainly in black and grey. These are colors of darkness and sadness to indicate their suffering present and future life. We will write a custom essay sample on Speech of Distinctively Visual or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Lightning is also effectively used as light is focused on the mother and her child who draw the attention of the audiences. Most importantly, the photographer has captured the images of the frowning mother, the crying son which has leave strong impression to the audiences and make them aware of their suffer. These victims are not only suffering from Agent Orange but they also live in poverty. Through the composition in the photo, the poverty these people are living in has been successfully illustrated. In this photo, at the front of the house, where everything is exposed, the mother bathed her son in a basin and with only an old, big bucket to fill water. The house behind them is old, broken and rundown. Everything has shown a life of deprivation and misery. Those are completely what happen in their daily life and are not purposely arranged. This fact has help make the audiences understand and create the feelings of sympathy towards them. Even though their life is in poverty and full of suffer, they still love each other as a family. It is proven by their gesture in the photo. The mother uses her gentle hands to bath and also to embrace and comfort her son, who is crying in pain. By looking at this image, we can see how the mother love towards her son can help her overcome all of the obstacles in life, which will deeply move the audiences. It is clear that my text is contain harsh images about the consequences of Agent Orange though enlightening how much its victims suffered, their life in poverty as well as their love towards each other. The photographer’s use of distinctively visual textual elements has helped him successfully convey his ideas to the audiences.