Chris mccandless and timothy treadwell

That the path you are supposed to travel is set in stone and the choices you're faced with weren't yours to be decided. Is it true? Are we really Just a small part of something that a higher power thinks we're too feeble-minded to understand? No, we make our own choices; we are In charge of our lives and have the ability to change our lives If we want to. And that's exactly what Chris Mishandles and Timothy Treadwell did. They weren't happy with the life they had so they lied, changed their names, and abandoned the lives they had for meeting they wanted.One of the big things that Chris Mishandles and Timothy Treadwell had in common was that they had troubled pasts, lied to the people they met, and changed their name. Although on a larger scale they changed and lied for different reasons, on a smaller scale they did it to get away from life they didn't want so that they could finally live the way they really wanted to. They were both smart, Mishandles went to Memory and Treadwell went to Bradley on a swimming scholarship, only to lose It because of a back Injury.A point in their pasts where they differ is in substance abuse, Treadwell had a terrible drinking problem and referred to his life with the bears as Is â€Å"13 year sobriety plan†, Mishandles never had any problems Like that. Although It may not have seemed Like It, they both had purposes for doing what they did. Treadwell wanted to protect the bears and educate people about them, but he still wanted to be involved with people. Mishandles did it for himself, he wanted to escapes from society and his family who he felt he could no longer trust.Whenever Mishandles felt people were getting too close he left, it was a defense mechanism, he didn't want to be hurt by others like he was by family. Treadwell had only been hurt by alcohol and women that didn't want him, but he still loved to be around people and experiencing life. But whatever the purpose or the outcome, they followed their dreams. Mishan dles wanted to go to Alaska and live off the land and journal, and he did, Treadwell wanted to educate people and tape his Journeys and he did. They both may have died, but It was doing what they loved, and at the end of he day Isn't that what we all want for ourselves?Something that seemed unlikely for both of them, but turned out to be true was that people liked them. Whether they wanted it or not, there was something about them drew people in and made them want to know more and be a part of their lives. But it wasn't that easy, Mishandles didn't trust people and If he started to let himself get close to people he pulled away and left people and himself to wonder why. Treadwell on the other hand kept many friends and visited people when he wasn't paving with the bears; he still wanted to have relationships.They weren't happy with the hand they were dealt, so they changed the game. People say that they were crazy, and deserved to die, but I think the opposite. I respect and admire them, even though their travels TLD necessarily end the way they wanted, they TLD let what people thought stop them, They were proving to people that Just because you're given a few bad cards In the beginning, doesn't mean you're going to lose the game. Chris mishandles and timothy Treadwell By Charlotte feeble-minded to understand?No, we make our own choices; we are in charge of our lives and have the ability to change our lives if we want to. And that's exactly what Chris Mishandles and Timothy Treadwell did. They weren't happy with the life they on a smaller scale they did it to get away from life they didn't want so that they could Memory and Treadwell went to Bradley on a swimming scholarship, only to lose it because of a back injury. A point in their pasts where they differ is in substance bears as is â€Å"13 year sobriety plan†, Mishandles never had any problems like that.Although it may not have seemed like it, they both had purposes for doing what he did. They both may have died, but it was doing what they loved, and at the end of the day isn't that what we all want for ourselves? But it wasn't that easy, Mishandles didn't trust people and if he started to let himself respect and admire them, even though their travels didn't necessarily end the way they wanted, they didn't let what people thought stop them. They were proving to people that Just because you're given a few bad cards in the beginning, doesn't mean

Acountability of a weapon

This is a paper written on the importance of keeping eyes on your weapon, written by Private John Jacob smith on the twenty third of September year two thousand fourteen. When you are in possession of a weapon for training purposes, or otherwise, for example; m 4, m 4 320 combo, m 249 saw, m 240 b, or 240 c, It is important to always maintain physical or visual contact with the weapon at all times. Also you should never be more than your own arm's length in distance from your weapon at any time.In the event that you should need to use the toilet, you should mind a responsible battle buddy that you know you can trust and request for them to look over the weapon while you are using the toilet. In the event you can not find a battle buddy that is both responsible and trustworthy to watch over your weapon while you are using the toilet, you will have to bring the weapon with you in to the restroom and insure that you wash your hands before using the weapon again.When on a firing range, i f for any reason you must leave your weapon with a persons who was placed with the responsibility of looking over your or a group of people's paeans by a higher authority, first insure your weapon is placed in the safe position an also make sure that the weapon Is cleared before leaving the weapon in the care of this person. There are many ways to Insure that your weapon Is both secure and safe. Whichever method you chose to keep your weapon safe and secure Is up to you.If you fail to keep your weapon safe and secure It could result In punishment by your superior NCO or specialist. Leaving your weapon unsecured could also result In life threatening consequences. Those consequences could be perhaps a deranged older getting their hands on your weapon and using the weapon to do harm on your fellow soldiers or even civilians. This would make you solely responsible for any deaths or Injuries that the deranged soldier caused. Leaving you weapon unattended could also result In the loose of the weapon.In which case you would have to replace the weapon at full cost from your personal Income. This could leave you with short founds and could result In further loss of your own personal goods. Not only could losing your weapon effect you financially but It could also affect your chances of getting promoted In the future. The loss of your weapon could also affect your battle buddies, causing them to stay latter looking for your weapon Instead of going home to their family and loved ones.Affecting your battle puddles personal time with their families could possibly damage you relationship with your team members and In the end could brand you as a salt bag amongst your peers. In conclusion If you are not responsible with your weapon, all kinds of bad salt could happen. Accountability of a weapon By Amsterdam an also make sure that the weapon is cleared before leaving the weapon in the care of this person. There are many ways to insure that your weapon is both secure and safe. Whichever method you chose to keep your weapon safe and secure is up to you. If you fail to keep your weapon safe and secure it could result in punishment by your superior NCO or specialist. Leaving your weapon unsecured could also result in life deaths or injuries that the deranged soldier caused. Leaving you weapon unattended could also result in the loose of the weapon. In which case you would have to replace the weapon at full cost from your personal income. This could leave you with short founds and could result in further loss of your own personal goods.Not only could losing your weapon effect you financially but it could also affect your chances of getting promoted in the future. The loss of your weapon could also affect your battle buddies, causing them to stay latter looking for your weapon instead of going home to their family and loved ones. Affecting your battle buddies personal time with their families could possibly damage you relationship with your team members and in the end could brand you as a sit bag amongst your peers. In conclusion if you are not responsible with your weapon, all kinds of bad sit could happen.

Nike Cost of Capital Essay

Kimi Ford a portfolio manager at NorthPoint Group which is a mutual-fund management firm, is considering to buy some shares from Nike, inc even if it’s share price had declined from the beginning of the year, for the Northpoint Large-cap fund she managed which invested mostly in Fortune 500 companies and it was doing well despite the decline in the stock market over the last 18 months. Kimi therefore surveyed the results of Nike’s fiscal-year 2001which had been revealed a week earlier. Issues that caused a decline in market sales as revealed by the management of Nike 1. Revenues since 1997 had stopped growing but remained around $9. 0 billion. 2. The net income had fallen from $800m to $580m a decline of $220 million. 3. Nike’s market share in the U. S. athletic shoe industry had fallen from 48 percent in 1997 to 42 percent in 2000 (6% decline) 4. The issue of Supply-chain and strong dollar exchange rate also affected the revenue negatively. Nike’s Strategic plan to address the above issues 1. Increase revenues by developing more athletic-shoe products in the mid-priced range. 2. Push its apparel line which had performed tremendously well. 3. Exert more expense control on the cost side. 4. Nike’s executives expressed their interest to continue with the long-term revenue growth target of 8 to 10 percent and earnings-growth targets of above 15 percent. Although the management presented its plan to improve on its performance, there were mixed reactions from the third party analysts. Kimi Ford was also not satisfied with the Nike’s analysis therefore she decided that it was necessary to develop her own discounted-cash-flow forecast. She found that Nike was overvalued at the discounted rate of 12% at its current share price of $42. 09. She also did a quick sensitivity analysis which revealed that Nike was undervalued at discounted rates below 11. 17%. In order for Kimi to make a proper investment decision for her Fund, she asked Joanna Cohen to calculate the cost of capital. However there were some problems. Cohen’s calculation of cost of capital. She used single cost of capital for the apparel and footwear lines assuming that they are sold through the same marketing and distribution channels and are often marketed in other collections of similar designs. WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital) WACC is calculated using weighted averages of debt (Kd) and equity (We) Cohen used Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to calculate WACC 0f 8. 4 % however, she used the book values yet weights should be based on the market value. Her result of $3,494. 5 for the Equity was wrong. The formula for calculating the Market value of equity is E = stock Price x Number of shares outstanding .

A Combat Reporter Read - Scott Anderson, Prisoner of War, Harpers Essay

A Combat Reporter Read - Scott Anderson, Prisoner of War, Harpers Magazine, January 1997 - Essay Example The author’s story gets clouded by memories of wars in places such as Beirut, Uganda, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, and the Sudan. The author is also physically trapped by war and thus the reason for the article’s title. At the present moment of his narration, the author is physically in Chechnya trying to relocate a man who disappeared in a war torn village. From his narration, the reader can witness that the author has physically been present in various warzones around the globe. The author explains that he feels a rush about wars that drive him to the war fields. He feels as though he has never been an observer of war but rather a participant. Through the article, the author also gets to explain how wars physically trap civilians and victims in a manner that curtails their freedom. The presence of gunships, tankers, and creation of physical barriers prevent people from living freely, and thus they become prisoners of war. Socially, the author is a prisoner of war. His social upbringing through his familial background almost destined his path to becoming a prisoner of war. He explains that ever since a young age, he always felt like war would eventually find him. His father was a foreign aid officer and this meant that he got raised in ‘frontline states’ such as south Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia where he begun to witness the impacts of war at a tender age. His father had fought in the World War II. His Godfather was an air force major. His brother was also a writer who documented on the direct impacts of war on civilians. This social upbringing shows that the author became a prisoner of war from an early age. He witnessed wars from an early age and thus he gets trapped by it. This article shows the effects that war can have on individuals. Through the author’s narrative, the reader has a feeling that wars have made him to become partly numb

John Wycliffe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

John Wycliffe - Essay Example Until recently the importance of Wycliffe's teachings and ideas for England that was experiencing critical times at his day has been widely neglected. The common view is that Wycliffe's legacy exerted certain influence on the Reformist movement only a century after his death, while his impact on theology, social life, philosophy and politics of the 14th century England does not receive appropriate attention. The fact is that Wycliffe was involved in a number of happenings in philosophy, science and theology that occurred in his day. These happenings laid foundation to the subsequent flowering of science, art, and literature known as the Renaissance, and Wycliffe's contribution to these developments deserves to be studied more deeply and systematically. Although Wycliffe as a priest supported the idea of a papacy for most of his life, his late views of the church were rather close to the doctrines of contemporary religious institutions. Thus, he considered the church to be the congregation of the predestined, believed in the priesthood of all believers and rejected the traditional doctrine that the clergy were synonymous to the church claiming they were also laymen as any other believer (Parker, 1965: 36). Moreover, Wycliffe also argued that popes can make mistakes and take wrong decisions because only God is flawless, while even the most righteous pope is also a layman (McLaughlin, 2000: 4). These challenging views found their reflections in the doctrines of lordship, dominium and the state of grace formulated by Wycliffe during the political phase of his career. The doctrine of Dominium postulates that man had had full lordship over the world before the Fall, and Christ restored it through his death on the cross. However, he restored the lordship not to the clergy alone: the lordship is restored to all the believers whom truly shared the passion of Christ. The entailing conclusion that those who share are in a state of grace and thus have lordship over the world undermined the lordship of clergy and church greatly. The assumption that the origin of lordship and authority was truth coupled with the supposition that even popes make mistakes led Wycliffe to conclude that if the church takes bad wrong decisions, its authority vanishes. The real danger of such views for the church became apparent when John of Gaunt, a civil leader, seized the temporalities based upon Wycliffe's doctrine that "If the church fail in its duty, the temporal lords may rightly and lawfully deprive it of its temporal possessions; the judgment of such failure lying not with the theologian but with the civil politician" (Poole cited in McLaughlin, 2000: 5). Wycliffe's attitude to the concepts of forgiveness and salvation also contradicted the established doctrine of the church. He claimed that salvation could be achieved only by sincere faith: "Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation (McLaughlin, 2000: 5). Wycliffe questioned the concepts of confession and disapproved of the practice of selling indulgences and other

Nursing Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Nursing Leadership - Essay Example As the patient fell from the bed and broke his arm, the nurse and hospital were liable for damages. This paper aims to identify nursing policies that were not followed so as to prevent such a scenario from occurring. Firstly, nursing leadership and managerial qualities in regards to the present situation shall be outlined. Secondly, issues of nursing accountability shall be detailed. Next, the concept of team-work as pertains to the scenario shall be highlighted. Following, the topics of clinical governance, as well as teaching and facilitating of nurses in general, shall be outlined as relevant to the present scenario. Some of the areas that leadership and management incorporate are finances, business focus, information management, and marketing (Baker, 2000a; Kelly-Hayes, 2003). When a patient falls from a bed because procedures have not been followed, it is clear that nursing leadership and management training is lacking. In the current scenario, additional costs were created within the hospital to care for the patient, in regards to the broken limb, as well as consultation with attorney's to establish their legal obligations, and in administration costs to report the incident, and to process ongoing documentation relevant to the complaint made by the family. From the point of view of nursing being a business, the scenario i... The information management that was lacking was that the nurse did not have available protocols to compare her patient care to. In regards to marketing, the hospital as well as the nurse has provisioned the patient and family with an image of being incompetent and neglectful in their care for the patient.Recent studies point to a distinct lack of leadership qualities amongst nurses in general, and attribute this to a lack of training in the area (Laukkanen, 2005). Unfortunately, this is a waste of resources as nurses are in key position to influence hospital care policies, as well as state and national legislation (Sullivan, 2001). It is contended that student nurses need to be encouraged to develop their leadership and managerial skills, as well as their clinical skills (Baker, 200b). For example, a more salient awareness of cost-containment issues could have motivated the hospital to have set protocols for the bed-care of elderly patients (Antrobus, 1999). Additionally, the use of job re-design amongst the nursing staff could have provided the hospital with a critical evaluation of the sequential tasks of each job a nurse undertakes, and provided solutions for combining tasks to improve patient care (e.g., saying goodnight/see you later to a patient also includes the action of the hands checking the bed-rail is up) (Sullivan, 2001).Quality management important to nursing as it allows for an evaluation of the outcomes of practices. In turn, this style of management provides for a preventative approach to nursing that identifies potential problems quickly, and facilitates research into viable alternative solutions (Belcher, 2000; Hendel & Steinmann, 2002). As such,

Internetworking Switches and Routers Module Written ASSIGNMENT

Internetworking Switches and Routers Module Written - Assignment Example Routing protocols are divided into four categories, which includes hierarchical, flat, geographic and Quality of Service (QoS) routing mechanisms (Eslaminejad 2011, p. 24). First, the flat routing protocols are used to reduce or omit the redundant information originating from the primary sensor nodes. In these protocols, the sensor nodes perform the same task as well as forwarding data to the sink nodes. Data centric methods are used in these networks in order to eliminate the extra information thus reducing energy consumption. Flat protocols use two data centric methods, which include Direct Diffusion and Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation (SPIN). The methods reduce energy consumed by the sensor nodes, thus elongating the lifespan of the WSNs (Sohraby, Minoli and Znati 2007, p. 109). In hierarchical routing protocols, data transmission is conducted by clusters rather than individual nodes deployed in the harsh environments. Clustering technique is a common method used in this routing mechanism so as to save energy consumed in the entire WSNs. Clusters formed in these WSNs consist of a number of sensor nodes. The individual sensor nodes send data to the cluster heads, which in turn aggregates that data before transmitting it to the base station. Large amounts of energy are, therefore, saved when WSNs use the clustering method. The mechanism operates in a hierarchical order where primary nodes send information to the cluster heads, which in turn send it to the sink nodes (Garcia-Hernardo 2008, p. 123). The QoS-based routing mechanisms employed in WSNs aim at ensuring there is a balance between the energy consumption and data quality. WSNs applying the QoS concept should satisfy various parameters such as the delaying time and bandwidth. SAR (Sequential Assignment Routing) is one of the protocols that apply the concept of the QoS. Application of SAR allows WSNs to withstand technical failures at low power consumption.

For the film JFK, what is Oliver Stone's agenda Essay

For the film JFK, what is Oliver Stone's agenda - Essay Example Johnson was a member of the ring that planned Kennedy’s assassination (Stone 589). So, the most critical question in this film is the director’s agenda when he was making up this film. This essay examines Stone Oliver’s agenda in the film and whether the film was received, by both the public and the media, as it was intended. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a thrilling event that left the American people and the world startled. The world was confused the most when such an injustice in a developed world was tainted by unexplained occurrences when the assassination investigations started. The film captures this in detail by going back to the years when President Kennedy was President and the unfolding of the events that supposedly cost his life. Among the ones captured are the early years of Vietnam War, the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the missile crisis in Cuba, and the Laotian civil war (Brent 51). It was in November 22, 1963 that President Ke nnedy was brutally killed. It was after this occasion that New Orleans Jim Garrison and team got some hints on the assassination, and they commenced their investigation but the Federal Government publicly rebukes the developments (Salewic 80). The New Orleans attorney is forced to close the case when the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is murdered before he could go on trial. This occurrence further startled the world as to the game which Kennedy’s assassins had launched. After this closure, the film captures the reopening of the investigation in 1966 when Garrison related his encounter to Senator Long while he was on a plane trip. The inaccuracies in the Warren commission’s report enabled Garrison to identify some conflicts. In the film, several witnesses are interrogated by Garrison and his staff including other witnesses involved with Oswald. His informal investigations led to another suspect Ferrie, who is put on the spot when a witness testified that he saw Fer rie conspiring with Oswald, Shaw, and some Latin men to murder the President (Gary 1). Another interesting development was placed by Jean Hill who told the investigators that she witnessed the killing, and had heard four to six shots in total coming from the grassy Knoll, but was coerced by the U.S. Secret Service to testify that she had heard three shots from the book depository (Brent 52). This revelation led Garrison team to believe that there were changes made to Hill’s testimony given to Warren commission. Garrison investigators revealed that from their logical analysis of the alleged crime scene, the shots were not made by one person; there were others who were involved in the shootouts and thus, Oswald was not the only assassin. Given that there were two close shots, there was a possibility that two more assassins were involved. Another message that Oliver was sending to the world was that the then senior government personalities and the security ring were involved in the murder. In this case, the film reveals that Garrison discovered electronic surveillance microphones placed in his offices and meets X, a high official in Washington DC who revealed that the government, the CIA, the FBI, the U. S. Secret Service and the then Vice President Lyndon Johnson had a motive to cover up the cause of Kennedy’s death (Gary 1). Mr. X explains that president Kennedy was killed because it was

Micro Economy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Micro Economy - Research Paper Example Choosing one alternative requires giving up a number of other alternatives. There is an opportunity cost involved in making choices. Opportunity cost is considered to be the most important concept in economics. It is the value of the best alternative that is given up in order to make a choice (Rittenberg and Tregarthen 2011). It is on these ideas that the theory of comparative advantage is based. A country is deemed to have a comparative advantage in producing a good if it has a low opportunity cost n producing that good. Firms as well as countries have a comparative advantage in producing one good or offering one service over another. It therefore means that since resources – labor, capital are land are scarce they need to make a choice. The production possibility curve (PPC) is a graphical representation of the different combinations of goods and or services that can be produced in an economy with the resources and technology available. It brings together the three concepts of scarcity, choice and opportunity cost. The choice of producing one good instead of another or a particular combination of goods reflects scarcity of resources, making a choice between alternative options, and highlights the concept of opportunity cost. The slope of the PPC represents the opportunity cost of giving up one good or service for another – in the case of a simple two good/service model. It is this opportunity cost that is used to determine whether a comparative advantage exists. An economy is deemed to have a comparative advantage in the production of a good or service if the opportunity cost of doing so is lower for that economy than any other. Deardorff in his article entitled The General Validity of the Law of Comparative Advantage though making the point that the law does not hold in multi-commodity world indicates that the comparative advantage determines the form that international trade exhibits (941). This proposition, Deardorff indicates

Place Essay Example for Free

Place Essay When we visited them, we ate in their simple kitchen built with bamboo floors. They came wearing traditional Filipino dresses. They looked so beautiful for me (in their old age and single blessedness), and the kitchen smelled like fresh flowers. The other kitchen I can remember is the kitchen of my grandmother in a far remote place, along the Pacific Ocean. My grandmothers kitchen is a big kitchen built of wood. Imagine how old houses looked. There was firewood, big cooking utensils, as if theyre always serving 100 people everyday. There were sacks of rice piled on top of the other. Chickens were roaming in the backyard, down the back kitchen door. I dont know why I can always remember kitchens, even when I go to other homes, in different places. I love that kitchen part of the house. Many people say The kitchen and the toilet are very important rooms in the house. They must be kept clean and orderly at all times. Now, I have my own kitchen where I raised my kids. And as theyre grown ups, I like to work and write here. When I read Afred Kazins The Kitchen, it delighted me by what Kazin saw in the life of her mother. He focused on the kitchen room as the largest room and the center of the house. It was in the kitchen where his mother worked all day long as home dressmaker and where they ate all meals. He writes: The kitchen gave a special character to our lives; my mothers character. All the memories of that kitchen were the memories of my mother. In his essay, Alfred Kazin remembers how her mother said, How sad it is! It grips me! though after a while, her mother has drawn him one single line of sentence, Alfred, see how beautiful! Article Source: http://EzineArticles. om/4722428 This sentence-combining exercise has been adapted from The Kitchen, an excerpt from Alfred Kazins memoir A Walker in the City (published in 1951 and reprinted by Harvest Books in 1969). In The Kitchen, Kazin recalls his childhood in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood which in the 1920s had a largely Jewish population. His focus is on the room in which his mother spent much of her time working on the sewing she took in to make extra money. To get a feel for Kazins descriptive style, begin by reading the opening paragraph of the selection, reprinted below. Next, reconstruct paragraph two by combining the sentences in each of the 13 sets that follow. Several of the setsthough not allrequire coordination of words, phrases, and clauses. If you run into any problems, you may find it helpful to review our Introduction to Sentence Combining. As with any sentence-combining exercise, feel free to combine sets (to create a longer sentence) or to make two or more sentences out of one set (to create shorter sentences). You may rearrange the sentences in any fashion that strikes you as appropriate and effective. Note that there are two unusually long sets in this exercise, #8 and #10. In the original paragraph, both sentences are structured as lists. If you favor shorter sentences, you may choose to separate the items in either (or both) of these lists. After completing the exercise, compare your paragraph with Kazins original on page two. But keep in mind that many combinations are possible. The Kitchen* In Brownsville tenements the kitchen is always the largest room and the center of the household. As a child I felt that we lived in a kitchen to which four other rooms were annexed. My mother, a home dressmaker, had her workshop in the kitchen. She told me once that she had begun dressmaking in Poland at thirteen; as far back as I can remember, she was always making dresses for the local women. She had an innate sense of design, a quick eye for all the subtleties in the latest fashions, even when she despised them, and great boldness. For three or four dollars she would study the fashion magazines with a customer, go with the customer to the remnants store on Belmont Avenue to pick out the material, argue the owner downall remnants stores, for some reason, were supposed to be shady, as if the owners dealt in stolen goodsand then for days would patiently fit and aste and sew and fit again. Our apartment was always full of women in their housedresses sitting around the kitchen table waiting for a fitting. My little bedroom next to the kitchen was the fitting room. The sewing machine, an old nut-brown Singer with golden scrolls painted along the black arm and engraved along the two tiers of little drawers massed with needles a nd thread on each side of the treadle, stood next to the window and the great coal-black stove which up to my last year in college was our main source of heat. By December the two outer bed-rooms were closed off, and used to chill bottles of milk and cream, cold borscht, and jellied calves feet. Paragraph Two: 1. The kitchen held our lives together. 2. My mother worked in it. She worked all day long. We ate almost all meals in it. We did not have the Passover seder in there. I did my homework at the kitchen table. I did my first writing there. I often had a bed made up for me in winter. The bed was on three kitchen chairs. The chairs were near the stove. 3. A mirror hung on the wall. The mirror hung just over the table. The mirror was long. The mirror was horizontal. The mirror sloped to a ships prow at each end. The mirror was lined in cherry wood. 4. It took the whole wall. It drew every object in the kitchen to itself. 5. The walls were a whitewash. The whitewash was fiercely stippled. My father often rewhitened it. He did this in slack seasons. He did this so often that the paint looked as if it had been squeezed and cracked into the walls. 6. There was an electric bulb. It was large. It hung down at the end of a chain. The chain had been hooked into the ceiling. The old gas ring and key still jutted out of the wall like antlers. 7. The sink was in the corner. The sink was next to the toilet. We washed at the sink. The tub was also in the corner. My mother did our clothes in the tub. 8. There were many things above the tub. These things were tacked to a shelf. Sugar and spice jars were ranged on the shelf. The jars were white. The jars were square. The jars had blue borders. The jars were ranged pleasantly. Calendars hung there. They were from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue. They were from the Minsker Branch of the Workmans Circle. Receipts were there. The receipts were for the payment of insurance premiums. Household bills were there. The bills were on a spindle. Two little boxes were there. The boxes were engraved with Hebrew letters. 9. One of the boxes was for the poor. The other was to buy back the Land of Israel. 10. A little man would appear. The man had a beard. He appeared every spring. He appeared in our kitchen. He would salute with a Hebrew blessing. The blessing was hurried. He would empty the boxes. Sometimes he would do this with a sideways look of disdain. He would do this if the boxes were not full. He would bless us again hurriedly. He would bless us for remembering our Jewish brothers and sisters. Our brothers and sisters were less fortunate. He would take his departure until the next spring. He would try to persuade my mother to take still another box. He tried in vain. 11. We dropped coins in the boxes. Occasionally we remembered to do this. Usually we did this on the morning of mid-terms and final examinations. My mother thought it would bring me luck. 12. She was extremely superstitious. She was embarrassed about it. She counseled me to leave the house on my right foot. She did this on the morning of an examination. She always laughed at herself whenever she did this. 13. I know its silly, but what harm can it do? It may calm God down. Her smile seemed to say this. v John d. hazlett Repossessing the Past: Discontinuity and History In Alfred Kazins A Walker in the City Critics of Alfred Kazins A Walker in the City (1951)1 have almost always abstracted from it the story of a young man who feels excluded from the world outside his immediate ethnic neighborhood, and who eventually attempts to find, through writing, a means of entry into that world. It would be very easy to imagine from what these critics have said that the book was written in the same form as countless other autobiographies of adolescence and rites-of-passage. One thinks imme- diately, for instance, of a tradition stretching from Edmund Gosses Father and Son to Frank Conroys Stop-Time, as well as fictional auto- biographical works such as James Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We are encouraged in this view by the publishers, Har- court, Brace World, who tell us on the cover that A Walker in the City is a book about an American walking into the world, learning on his skin what it is like. The American is Alfred Kazin as a young man. Even the most thorough of Kazins critics, John Paul Eakin, writes of A Walker that the young Kazins outward journey to America is the heart of the book. 2 One of the few reviewers who noticed those elements that distin- guish this memoir from others of its kind was the well known Ameri- can historian, Oscar Handlin. Unfortunately, Mr. Handlin also found the book unintelligible: If some system of inner logic holds these sec- tions together it is clear only to the author. It is not only that chronol- ogy is abandoned so there is never any certainty of the sequence of events; but a pervasive ambiguity of perspective leaves the reader often in doubt as to whether it was the walker who saw then, or the writer who sees now, or the writer recalling what the walker saw then. Epi- 326 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 sodic, without the appearance of form or order, there is a day-dreamy quality to the organization, as if it were a product of casual reminis- cence. 3 Handlins charge that the memoir lacks a system of inner logic is incorrect, but he does identify a number of qualities that dis- tinguish A Walker from other coming-of-age autobiographies. One option that is not apparently available to autobiographers, as it is to novelists, is the removal of the authors presence from the narra- tive. And yet autobiographers do manage to achieve something like this removal by recreating themselves as characters. That is, we can distinguish between the author as author and the author as character (an earlier self). In some autobiographies of childhood, where the nar- ration ends before the character develops into what we might imagine to be the autobiographers present self, the writer may never appear (as writer) in the narrative at all. The earlier selves in such autobio- graphies remain as characters. Where the autobiographer appears as both character and writer, however, the distinction is by no means always clear. If the autobiographer actually follows the progress of his earlier self to the narrative present, then the distinction disappears somewhere en route. One can, in fact, distinguish between types of autobiographies according to the strategies they employ to achieve this obliteration of distance between earlier self (as character) and present self (as writer). Kazin has complicated this aspect of his autobiography by recreat- ing two distinct earlier selves: his child self and an adult self, the titu- lar walker. It is this aspect of his memoir that sets it apart from other coming-of-age autobiographies. In none of the conventional works in this sub-genre is the present narrative I so conspicuous a figure (not only as a voice, but as an active character) as it is in Kazins book, and in none of them is the chronological reconstruction of the past so pur- posefully avoided. His memoir, unlike most autobiographies of adoles- cence, is just as much about the efforts of the adult walker to recapture his past self as it is about his earlier attempts to go beyond that self. By granting his present self equal status with the re-creation of his child- hood, he has produced a hybrid form. The central characteristic of that form is the parallel relationship between the quest of the young Kazin to achieve selfhood by identify- ing himself with an American place and a portion of its history, and the quest of the older Kazin to resolve some present unrest about who he is by recovering his younger self and the locale of his own past. The former quest is that story hich critics say the memoir is about, but the latter is located in the memoir on at least two levels. Like the Hazlett repossessing the past 327 childs quest, it is narrated, in that Kazin actually tells us of his return, as an adult, to Brownsville, but its significance is manifest only on an implicit level; we must infer why the quest was undertaken. 4 Kazin emphasizes the symmetry of these two quests by describing each of them in phrases that echo the other. In the first chapter of the memoir, the adult Kazin, walking through the streets of the Browns- ville neighborhood in which he grew up, describes what it means to him: Brownsville is that road which every other road in my life has had to cross (p. 8). By going back and walking once again those familiarly choked streets at dusk (p. 6), he is reviewing his own his- tory in an attempt to settle some old doubts about the relationship between his past and present selves. In similar language, Kazin describes at the very end of the memoir how the boys search for an American identity finally expressed itself in a fascination with Ameri- can history, and in particular with the dusk at the end of the nine- teenth century which was, he thought, that fork in the road where all American lives cross (p. 171). The parallels that we find in language are repeated in the means by which the young boy finds access to America and the adult finds access to his younger selfA—by walking and by immersing himself in the his- torical ambiance of an earlier period. I could never walk across Roe- blings bridge, he says of himself as a boy, or pass the hotel on Uni- versity Place named Albeit, in Ryders honor, or stop in front of the garbage cans at Fulton and Cranberry Streets in Brooklyn at the place where Whitman had himself printed Leaves of Grass, without thinking that I had at last opened the great trunk of forgotten time in New York in which I, too, I thought, would someday find the source of my unrest (p. 72). The young Kazin initially found his way out of Brownsville and into the America of the nineteenth century by walk- ing into an historical locale. It is again by walking, by going over the whole route (p. 8), that the adult Kazin sets out to rediscover his child self in the streets of Brownsville. One may detect, however, an ironic tension between these two quests. The childs search is the immigrant scions search for an Amer- ican identity. It is, in part, the psychological extension of the parents literal search for America, and, in part, the result of his parents ambivalence about their own place in the New World. The most sig- nificant frustration of the young Kazins life was over the apparently unbridgeable discontinuity between them and us, Gentiles and us, alrightniks and us. . . . The line . . . had been drawn for all time (p. 99). This discontinuity represented to him the impossibility of choos- 328 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 ing a way of being in the world. Eventually, it takes on larger meaning in the childs mind to include the distance between the immigrants past in Russia and the late nineteenth century America of Teddy Roosevelt, between poverty and making out all right, between, finally, a Brownsville identity and an American identity. In the childs quest, these petty distinctions I had so long made in loneliness (p. 173) are overcome through a vision of the Brooklyn Bridge that allowed him to see how he might span the discontinuities that left him outside all that (p. 72); and through the discovery of a model for himself as a solitary singer in the tradition of Blake, my Yeshua, my Beethoven, my Newman and a long line of nineteenth century Americans (p. 172). The final element of his victory over them and us, however, was the substitution of Americas history for his own Brownsville history and his familys vague East-European his- tory. His parents past, he said, bewildered him as a child: it made me long constantly to get at some past nearer my own New York life, my having to live with all those running wounds of a world I had never seen (p. 9). To resolve this longing, he says, I read as if books would fill my every gap, legitimize my strange quest for the American past, remedy my every flaw, let me in at last into the great world that was anything just out of Brownsville (p. 172). The adult walker, on the other hand, is searching for the child he once was and for the world in which he grew up; his intention is to re- create his old awareness of the adolescents gaps so that he might resolve them. By the time Kazin begins his retrogression to childhood, ten years have elapsed since his final departure from Brownsville (p. ) and (assuming that the narrative present is also the writers present) some twenty years have elapsed since the final scene of the book. Dur- ing that period, the writer has undergone a peculiar transformation. The adolescents strange quest for an American identity through the substitutio n of Americas past for his own has culminated outside the frame of A Walker in the writing of On Native Grounds,5 a book that is obsessively and authoritatively alive with American history. The young boy has grown up to become one of Americas established literary spokesmen; he has become one of them. In becoming the man, the child has not, however, closed the gaps; he has simply crossed over them to the other side. As a child, Kazin thought of himself as a solitary, standing outside of America (p. 172); as an adult autobiographer, he stands outside of his own past. The adults attempt to imagine his own history, there- fore, begins with the significant perception of his alienation from his Hazlett repossessing the past 329 wn child self and from the time and place in which that self lived. Brownsville is not a part of his present sense of himself, it must be given back (p. 6) to him; and going back reveals a disturbing dis- continuity. The return to Brownsville fills him with an an instant rage . . . mixed with dread and some unexpected tenderness (p. 5). He senses again, he says, the old foreboding that all of my life would be like this (p. 6) and I feel in Brownsville that I am walking in my sleep. I keep bumping awake at harsh intervals, then fall back into my trance again (p. 7). The extent of his alienation from his former self is attested to in the last of Kazins memoirs, New York Jew, where he writes that A Walker was not begun as an autobiography at all, but simply as an exploration of the city. Dissatisfied with the barren, smart, soulless6 quality of what he was writing, Kazin kept attempting to put more of himself into the book. Finally, he says, I saw that a few pages on The Old Neighborhood in the middle of the book, which I had dreamily tossed off in the midst of my struggles with the city as something alien to me, became the real book on growing up in New York that I had wanted to write without knowing I did. 7 There is, naturally, a good deal of irony in this, as well as some pathos, for although Kazin does not expressly acknowledge the rela- tionship between the two quests, it seems clear that the young boys search for an American identity entailed the denial of his own cultural past. Ultimately, this denial necessitated the writing of the book, for the adults search is for the self he lost in his effort to become an Amer- ican. The adults problem is not resolved within the narrative, how- ever, but by the narrative itself. It is the writer who establishes the con- nection between his earlier, lost self and his adult self. In doing this, he completes the bridge to America. The writer in this sense may be distinguished from the adult walker who is, like the young Kazin, merely a character, a former self, within the memoir. In formal terms, the two quests that comprise the narra- tive material of the memoir make up its fabula; the resolution of both quests is to be found only in the coexistence of these two selves in the narrative as narrative. The resolution, in other words, is accomplished by formal, literary means. It is enacted by the memoirs sujet. Given these two quests as the key to the memoirs form, the general structure of the book may be schematized as follows: Chapter I: The walker returns literally to his childhood neighbor- hood and imaginatively to childhood itself. Chapter II: The walker stops and the autobiographer (distinguished 330 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 here from the walker) contemplates the psychological/symbolic cen- ter of childhood, the kitchen. Chapter III: The walker literally returns to the scenes of his adoles- cence and imaginatively to adolescence. Chapter IV: The walker stops and the autobiographer (again, distin- guished from walker) contemplates the psychological/symbolic cen- ter of adolescence, the rites of passage. The use of this structure naturally gives rise to some difficulties of perspective. Mr. Handlins observation that there are at least three dif- ferent points of view: the walker who saw then, or the writer who sees now, or the writer recalling what the walker saw then was apt, even though he could not see that the complexity of perspectives fol- lowed a fairly careful pattern. An analysis of what those points of view are, and how they work together, must begin with the recognition that all earlier perspectives, both the walkers and the childs, are recreated in the writers voice, which mimics them in a very complex form of lit- erary ventriloquism. Given this, one may recognize that within the narrative the writer, the single informing point-of-view, speaks in three different voices: his own as writer, the voice of the adult walker, and the voice of the child. Each of these voices gives rise to variations in narrative technique. In chapters one and three, the writer uses a fictive device to create the illusion that no recollection of the adult walkers perspective is neces- sary in the act of transferring his walking thoughts to the written word. The voice of the adult walker, an earlier self who made the trip, is identified with that of the writer by the frequent use of the present tense: The smell of damp out of the rotten hallways accompanies me all the way to Blake Avenue (p. 7). In these chapters, the walkers memories of childhood are emphasized as memories because his physi- cal presence and voice call attention to the context and the mechanics of remembering. Thus, from the moment the walker alights from the train at Rockaway Avenue in chapter one, the text is sprinkled with reminders that this is the story of the adult walker pursuing the past through cues from the present: Everything seems so small here now (p. 7), the place as I have it in my mind I never knew then (p. 11), they have built a housing project (p. 12), I miss all these ratty wooden tenements (p. 13). Similarly, in chapter three, after Kazin steps away from the more disembodied memory of his mothers kitchen: the whole block is now thick with second hand furniture stores I have to fight maple love seats bulging out of the doors (p. 78), I see the barbershop through the steam (p. 79). Hazlett repossessing the past 331 In both of these chapters, the writer/walkers imagination seizes upon and transforms the landmarks of an earlier period of his life. The literal journey back to Brownsville becomes a metaphorical journey backward in time so that the locale of the past becomes by degrees the past itself: Every time I go back to Brownsville it is as if I had never been away. It is over ten years since I left to live in the cityA— everything just out of Brownsville was always the city. Actually I did not go very far; it was enough that I could leave Brownsville. Yet as I walk those familiarly choked streets at dusk and see the old women sit- ting in front of the tenements, past and present become each others faces; I am back where I began (pp. 5-6). This is, in fact, what gives the book that quality of casual reminis- cence that Mr. Handlin found so unsatisfactory. Kazins technique in chapters one and three is much like that of a person rummaging through an attic full of memorabilia. Each street, each shop serves to spark a particular memory. There is, of course, a danger in this kind of writing. It teeters constantly on the brink of random sentimentalism. The walker always presents the past in a hypermediated form, never through the coolly objective (and hidden) eyes of the impartial self- historian that characterize most conventional autobiographies. This is particularly true when he indulges in nostalgia, as he does when the walker inspects that part of his neighborhood which has been rebuilt as a housing project. There he subjects us to a series of iterated fondnesses, each beginning with the nostalgic I miss (p. 3). But in spite of this flirtation with sentimentality, the walkers presence is not merely an occasion for self-indulgence. In the context of the whole memoir, it clearly serves instead to highlight the drama being played out between the quest of the child and the quest of the adult. As the walker nears the two significant centers of childhood and adolescence, in chapters two and four respectively, he underg oes a transformation. The mediatory presence of the walker disappears, leaving only the disembodied autobiographical voice of conventional memoirs. Unlike the first and third chapters, in which each memory was sparked by actual relics from the past, these chapters take place entirely in the autobiographers imagination. To mark this change, chapter two opens with the writers memory of a previous memory of his mothers kitchen which he compares with his present recollection of it: the last time I saw our kitchen this clearly was one afternoon in London at the end of the war, when I waited out the rain in the entrance to a music store. A radio was playing into the street, and standing there I heard a broadcast of the first Sabbath service from 332 biography Vol. , No. 4 Belsen Concentration Camp (p. 51). This is the voice, not of a rum- maging memory, but of pure disembodied memory. The vision of the kitchen is not sparked by another visit there. In fact, at the opening of chapter two we lose sight of the walker for the first time. The adult Kazins presence is signalled in chapters two and four, not by reference to his present surro undings, but by verb tense alone: It was from the El on its way to Coney Island that I caught my first full breath of the city in the open air (p. 37); although at times, he intrudes into the narrative by referring to his present feelings: I think now with a special joy of those long afternoons of mildew and quiet- ness in the school courtyard (p. 136). The adult walker, however, does not appear in these chapters at all. This transformation, from walker to disembodied memorial voice, draws the reader along the path followed by the adult quester: from the streets of the walkers Brownsville to the streets of the childs Brownsville. As the quester nears his goal, the present Brownsville fades from view. The narrative strategy of A Walker recreates the adults quest by revealing the increasing clarity and intensity of his perception of the childs world. The walkers mediatory presence, initially so conspicu- ous, deliquesces at crucial points so that memory becomes a direct act of identification between rememberer and remembered. The present tense of the walkers observations becomes the past tense of the walkers recollections which becomes the past tense of the writers memory which, finally, becomes the present tense of the childs world. The final identification of writer and child occurs in the two most intense moments of the memoir: at the end of The Kitchen (chapter two) and toward the end of Summer: The Way to Highland Park (chapter four). The first instance follows immediately upon the writers recollec- tion of the power of literature to bridge the gaps between himself and another world. He recalls the child reading an Alexander Kuprin story which takes place in the Crimea. In the story, an old man and a boy are wandering up a road. The old man says, Hoo! hoo! my son! how it is hot! (p. 73). Kazin recalls how completely he, as a young boy, had identified with them: when they stopped to eat by a cold spring, I could taste that bread, that salt, those tomatoes, that icy spring (p. 73). In the next and final paragraph of the chapter, the writer slips into the present tense: Now the light begins to die. Twilight is also the minds grazing time. Twilight is the bottom of that arc down which we have fallen the whole Hazlett repossessing the past 333 long day, but where I now sit at our cousins window in some strange silence of attention, watching the pigeons go round and round to the leafy smell of soupgreens from the stove. In the cool ofthat first evening hour, as I sit at the table waiting for supper and my father and the New York World, everything is so rich to overflowing, I hardly know where to begin, (p. 73) The place and the vision in this curious passage are the childs, but the voice is clearly the adults. Just as the child once tasted the bread, salt and tomatoes of his literary heroes, so now the adult writer achieves an intense identification with his own literary creation: his child self. He sees with the childs eyes, smells with the childs nose, feels the childs expectant emotions, but renders all these perceptions with the adults iterary sophistication. The intensity of expectation which the writer attributes to the child is amplified by the intensity of the writers expectation that the forthcoming richness is as much his as it is the childs. The childs expectations are, ultimately, of that New York world which he discovers in the following chapter. The writers expectations are of a comple tion of identity which can be accom- plished only through the mediation of form. Twilight and the New York World have become formal touchstones in the literary recreation of his self. The second instance takes place toward the end of the memoir and like the first, it immediately precedes a significant passage through to a world beyond the kitchen. Like the first, it also is a recollection of his home, at twilight, in the summer. And to emphasize its signifi- cance as a literary act, the writer echoes the Kuprin passage here: The kitchen is quiet under the fatigue blown in from the parched streetsA—so quiet that in this strangely drawn-out light, the sun hot on our backs, we seem to be eating hand in hand. How hot it is still! How hot still! The silence and calm press on me with a painful joy. I cannot wait to get out into the streets tonight, I cannot wait. Each unnatural moment of silence says that something is going on outside. Something is about to happen, (p. 164) The pages which follow this merging of writer and child, and which end the book, complete the childs emerging vision of his bridge to America. In these pages; the writer employs a new method of recap- turing and re-entering the past. The walk to Highland Park is under- taken by the adolescent and is recalled by the adult in the past tense, but it is given immediacy by the frequent interjection of the adverbial pointers now and here: Ahead of me now the black web of the 334 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 Fulton Street El (p. 168). Everything ahead of me now was of a dif- ferent order . . . Every image I had of peace, of quiet shaded streets in some old small-town America . . . now came back to me . . . Here were the truly American streets; here was where they lived (p. 169). The effect is peculiar, but appropriate. By using the adverbial pointers, here and now, together with the adults past tense, Kazin is able to convey the eerie impression that he is, finally, both here, in the adults present, and there, in the childs past. The bridge between them is complete. The complexity of perspective and structure in Kazins memoir caused Mr. Handlin to observe that chronology is abandoned so there is never any certainty of the sequence of events. In most autobio- graphies, the inevitable discontinuities between present and past selves are overcome by the construction of a continuous, causally developed, and therefore meaningful, story. By purposefully avoid- ing such a reconstruction with its solid assumptions of the reality of the selfs history and the ability of language to convey that reality with- out serious mediatory consequences, Kazin refocuses our attention on the autobiographer/historianA—not the past as it was, but history as recreated by the imagination. Self-history in A Walker is not continu- ous and linear, but spatial; the past is not a time, but a place. For the youth, it was a place from which he wanted to escape. For the adult, it is a place to which he fears to return (the old foreboding that all my life would be like this) and to which he feels he must return in order to complete and renew himself. The childs world seems timeless; it is frozen in a tableau, like a wax museum, in which the adult can explore, in a curiously literal manner, his own past. That some of the figures are missing or that the present may actually have vandalized the arrangement of props, only intensifies its apparent isolation from adult, historical life. This difference between the timelessness of childhood, as we per- ceive it in the memoir, and the adults implied immersion in history may illuminate the nature of the quest upon which the autobiographer has embarked. We can see, for instance, that the motivation which lies behind the quest for identity is grounded upon assumptions about the nature of life in history. The discontinuity felt by both the child and the adult is not simply between a Brownsville identity and an Ameri- can identity, but between the Timelessness which childhood repre- sents and History. Burton Pike, writing from a pyschoanalytic perspective, has sug- gested that autobiographies of childhood in general reveal a fascination Hazlett repossessing the past 335 with states of timelessness: the device of dwelling on childhood may also serve two other functions: It may be a way of blocking the ticking of the clock toward death, of which the adult is acutely aware, and it may also represent a deep fascination with death itself, the ultimately timeless state. 9 The adults return to Brownsville becomes, in this view, a journey motivated not simply by a desire for completion of identity, but also by a desire to escape the exigencies of historical life- death, as Pike asserts, and, perhaps more obviously, guilt. The writing of A Walker, Kazin says in New York Jew, was a clutch at my old innocence and the boy I remembered . . . was a necessary fiction, he was so virtuous. 10 What is of particular interest in Kazins memoir, however, is the manifest content of the childs quest whic h offers a counterpoint to Pikes useful analysis. The fascination in A Walker, works both ways: the adult longs for the childs timeless world and the child longs for the adults sense of history. Moreover, as the adolescent stands outside of America, he longs not only to possess a history of his own, but to enter history. The child is never interested in the past for its own sake; he wishes to be one of the crowd, to be swept along in the irrevocable onward rush of political and social events. Entering history for him is the clearest and most satisfying form of belonging. Kazins memoir is not, therefore, reducible to a psychoanalytical model. Since he always handles the issue of life in history consciously, it is difficult to approach the relationship between the autobiographer and time as though the writer were himself unaware of the implica- tions of his subject matter. His escape from history through the recovery of childhood was, at least on one level, a very conscious rejec- tion of the autobiographical form dictated by Marxist historicism and chosen by many leftist writers during the 30s, the period of his own coming-of-age. Writers in this older generation felt that successful self re-creation, both autobiographical and actual, could be accomplished only by determining ones position vis A vis a cosmic historical force. 11 Kazins choice of autobiographical form was partly a response to the effect that this philosophy had had on him as a young man. In his sec- ond memoir, Starting Out in the Thirties, Kazin recalls, with disillu- sionment, the sense of exhilaration that accompanied his own histori- cism during the Great Depression: History was going our way, and in our need was the very life-blood of history . . . The unmistakable and surging march of history might yet pass through me. There seemed to be no division between my efforts at personal liberation and the appar- ent effort of humanity to deliver itself. 12 One might argue, of course, that as an autobiography of childhood, 336 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 A Walker does not deal with the historical world, and therefore can- not address the problems of historicism. But to do so would be to ignore the overwhelming importance which Kazin places upon the relationship between the individual and history in all of his writings, and in particular in his autobiographical work. By emphasizing the adults role in the reconstruction of the child, and by creating a paral- lel between the older mans reconstruction of his childhood and the childs reconstruction of the American past, Kazin locates the source of historical meaning, whether personal or collective, in the historian and undermines historicisms claim that the past possesses meaning independent of human creation. Kazin does not, however, advocate a view of identity divorced from collective history, nor does he value the personal over the collective past. More than most autobiographers of childhood, Kazin has the sensibilities of a public man, a writer very much in and of the world. As we descend with him into the vortex of his reconstructed past, the larger world that he is leaving is always present or implied. More- over, Kazins return to his lost innocence provides more than a mere escape from history because the childhood he reconstructs was full of a longing for history, as we have seen. The childs Whitmanesque dream that he could become an American by assimilating Americas past was born of a belief that the collective past might somehow deliver him from us and them, from the feeling that as isolated indi- viduals (outside of history) we are meaningless. By 1951, when he wrote A Walker, he had indeed been delivered by his dream out of iso- lation, but the post-War, post-Holocaust America in which he found himself was not the one which his history had promised. It is in this context that the return to childhood must be read. The young Kazin had dreamed that collective history would be the salvation of the self; the older Kazin, even while remaining committed to collective history, realized that history, far from providing our salvation, was the very thing from which we must be saved. The power of A Walker ulti- mately derives from the tension between this commitment to our col- lective fate and the belief that our only salvation from that fate lies in a consciousness of the past. The adult walkers reconstruction of his childhood may have begun as an effort of the historical self to connect with an apparently ahistorical self, but the ironic achievement of that effort was the discovery that the earlier self had, in fact, been firmly grounded in history, the history of first generation immigrant Jews. The peculiar intensity with which Kazin identifies his personal past with the collective past raises questions about the relationship of both Hazlett repossessing the past 337 o the larger question of life in history and makes A Walker an interest- ing example of the options available to contemporary American auto- biographers. A Walker rejects the historicism of the 30s and the forms of the self that such historicism produced, but nevertheless maintains the belief that the self is never fully realized until it has defined its rela- tionship to the issues of the times; that is, to historical issues. It is precisely this belief which distinguishes Kazins autobiogra phy from other coming-of-age memoirs. On the surface, it appears to appeal to a private and psychological explanation of the self, but finally it relies firmly upon the belief that only the determination of our relationship to collective experience can provide our private selves with worth. This belief provides the motivation for the two quests discussed in the first half of this essay. In a Commentary article published in 1979, Kazin wrote that the most lasting autobiographies tend to be case histories limited to the self as its own history to begin with, then the self as the history of a particular moment and crisis in human history . . 13 In its presenta- tion of the latter, A Walker reflects not only the struggle of a first-gen- eration immigrant son to become an American, but also the struggle of the modern imagination, which has lost faith in either a divine or a cosmic ordering of history, to recreate a meaningful past. The life of mere experience, Kazin says in that article, and especially of history as the suppo sedly total experience we ridiculously claim to know, can seem an inexplicable series of unrelated moments. In A Walker, the child and the adult are both motivated by the autobiographical belief that history still constitutes meaning and identity; both yearn for con- tinuity. But by focusing on the context in which the past is reclaimed, Kazin emphasizes the difficulties and limitations of his task and places it on the insecure basis which attends every human effort to create meaning. Such an approach to the relationship between history and the self demands finally that the walker be able to tread a tightrope between the reality of the past and the solipsism toward which a reliance on imagination and language tends. Burton Pike has stated that as the twentieth century began, belief in History as a sustaining external principle collapsed, and suggests that the term autobiography cannot accurately be said to apply to twentieth century forms of self-writing since it might best be regarded as a historical term, applicable only to a period roughly corre- sponding to the nineteenth century; that period when, in European thought, an integrity of personal identity corresponded to a belief in the integrity of cultural conventions. 14 By using as his examples 338 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 authors who had come to autobiography from the Modernist move- ment (he mentions Musil, Stein, Rilke, Mailer), Pike has certainly overestimated the impact of Modernism (which relativized and internalized time) on our basic conception of history. Even within the literary community (and particularly among those, like Kazin, who were raised in a leftist political tradition), there was widespread resis- tance to ideas of time that impinged upon the nineteenth century notions of history. The weakest point in Pikes argument is, in fact, his failure to acknowledge the strength of the Marxist legacy in twentieth century thought, and in particular the effect of historicism on modern autobiographies. Even Kazins A Walker, in spite of its rejection of ideological historicism and its attention to the subjectivity of the self- writer, retains a belief in history as fate. Perhaps the significance of Kazins book lies in its revelation of one mans response to the dilemma of his generation: their vision of the self, which was shaped and sustained by historicism, collapsed just when they were about to enter upon the stage of history. Confronted with the collapse of this sustaining external principle autobio- graphers committed to the idea of life in history were faced with the difficult task of defining anew how one might transcend the inexplic- able series of unrelated moments that constitute our daily experience. Kazins return to childhood in A Walker is one answer. Other autobio- graphers are still trying, with varying degrees of success, to find sub- stantial historical movements and directions with which to structure the past, give meaning to the present, and help predict the future. Even a cursory glance at contemporary autobiographical writing reveals that there are many ways to do this; most clearly it can be seen in the increasing numbers of autobiographies written by members of newly self-conscious groupsA—Blacks, women, gays, a generation. The belief held by each of these groups that their time has come is a form of historicism (frequently unconscious) that allows the individual autobiographer to transcend mere experience by identifying him/herself with the historical realization of the groups identity. They provide ample evidence that autobiographies, even at this late post- Modernist date, remain both a literary and a historical form. 15 University of Iowa NOTES 1. A Walker in the City (New York: Harcourt Brace ; World, 1951). AU subsequent references to this book will be given in the body of the text. Hazlett repossessing the past 339 2. John Paul Eakin, Kazins Bridge to America, South Atlantic Quarterly, 77 (Win- ter 1978), 43. This article provides an excellent summary and discussion of the coming-of-age aspect of the memoir. Readers interested in a thorough reading of the memoir are referred to Sherman Paul, Alfred Kazin, Repossessing and Renewing: Essays in The Green American Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. , 1976), pp. 236-62. 3. Oscar Handlin, rev. f A Walker in the City, Saturday Review of Literature, 17 November 1951, p. 14. 4. One might add that most autobiographies are structured in this way: on the one hand, the explicit journey of the youthful I toward manhood, and, ulti- mately, toward a complete identification with the narrative I; on the other hand, the implicit journey of the adult, narrative I backward in time to find an earlier self, Kazins memoir is distinguished by the wa y in which it makes this second journey such an important and explicit aspect of the narrative. . (New York: Harvest, 1942). 6. New York Jew, (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 313. 7. New York Jew, p. 320. 8. Kazins loss of his childhood is reflected indirectly in On Native Grounds, the monumental literary history that culminated his search for an American past. That work conspicuously omits any discussion of the contribution of Jews to American literature. Thus, Robert Towers remarks in Tales of Manhattan (New York Review of Books, May 18, 1978, p. 2): The great immigration of East European Jews passes unnoticed, as though it had never happened as though it had not deposited Alfred Kazins bewildered parents on the Lower East side. So powerful has been the subsequent impact of Jewish writing upon our consciousness that it seems incredible that Kazin should have found noth- ing to say about its early manifestations in a history so inclusive as On Native Grounds. 9. Time in Autobiograph y, Comparative Literature, 28 (Fall 1976), 335. 10. New York Jew, pp. 232 and 321 respectively. The return to childhood as renewal through reconnection with an earlier, innocent self is common to many auto- biographies and most eloquently expressed in William Wordsworths The Prel- ude: There are in our existence spots of time,/That with distinct pre-emi- nence retain/A renovating virtue, whence . . . our

The causes effects and solutions of domestic violence

The causes effects and solutions of domestic violence Domestic violence happens in three different ways in Vietnam, they are physical, sexual and emotional. Striking information shows that about 58% of women in Vietnam have been through at least one kind of domestic violence in their lifetime (UN 2010). It is obvious that women are prone to suffer from domestic violence than men and home does not seem to be the safe place for many women. About 97% victims of domestic violence is women (Binh 2011). Among three ways are two most common ones, namely physical and sexual violence. Domestic violence is widespread and varies greatly in different regions. 42% of women in the Southeast region have been abused by their husbands (UN 2010). In Ninh Binh, a woman used to be beaten once or twice every week (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation n.d.). Besides, the variations among regions, the situation is also dissimilar from one ethnic minority to others. The proportion of HMong women who are abused is 8%, and that of Kinh women is 36%. The problem has been worse because of peoples outdated view. Women are still in silence as they think it is a good way to maintain happiness in their family and being women, they need to be tolerant. Men, in addition, suppose that they can do anything since they are the most important people in families. Therefore, men still beat women for unreasonable causes such as lack of money for drinking, losing gamble, etc. 2.2 Violence should not be used to solve family issues Many problems arise during family life; hence, people especially men, sometimes unconsciously apply violence to deal with those problems. This method is completely unnecessary. There are some explanations for this discouragement. Domestic violence has very bad effects on victims (Child Welfare information Gateway n.d.). First of all, it causes health problems or physical injuries. Victims have to put up with normal injuries like scratches and bruises. Seriously, there are fractured bones in some cases, and victims may regularly experience headaches or stomachaches. Accordingly, women are unable to work to earn their living (Marjorie 2010). Secondly, women who are abused possibly suffer psychological problem. For example, many women become particularly angry and depressed; they abuse their own children and drink alcohol to alleviate the physical and emotional pains. Some studies show that victims of domestic violence are more likely to maltreat their children than those who are not abused by their partners (cited on UN 2010). When victims have no alternative, they put an end to their lives by suicide. Battered women commit suicide more often than those who are not battered (Marjorie 2010). That is completely a tragedy. However, women are not the only ones who suffer from the consequences of domestic violence. Children in this family accidentally become victims. These children do not have chance to enjoy their childhood. They have no choice but growing faster than others. While other kid are loved and taken care of by parents, those ones are responsible for doing housework, looking after younger sisters and brothers and thirsty for love. Moreover, their studying at school will also be affected. When children must do too many works and do not have enough time to sleep, they will fall asleep in class. Therefore, they can not understand the lessons and be blamed for being lazy and even some children drop out of school (Rebecca 2011). Gary Direnfeld (n.d.) indicates that children witnessing domestic violence seem to use violence as a way to gain what they need and want. Boys tend to get things they want by this way, so they do not have chance to improve skills like discussing and making dialogue to do. On the other hand, girls accept violence, and consider it a normal phenomenon. Besides, boys tend to bully and intimidate while girls are likely to exclude somebody and talk behind him or her. Another effect is that children become more aggressive and show violent actions (Rebecca 2011). It is because these children can not expose their feelings at home. If they have chances to express, they are possibly hit, spanked and punched. Children, at that time, are like a pressure cooker waiting to let out the steam (Rebecca 2011). Last but not least, domestic violence has bad influences on kids as they grow up. It is clear that parents are the first models in a childs life. If children are exposed to verbal abuse such as throwing, damaging furniture, slapping, kicking and insulting words everyday, what will happen? Certainly, there will be effects in the future life. In adult life, men witnessing domestic violence in childhood are more likely to abuse their wives than those who did not wit ness as children. Likewise, women who were exposed to violence in family when being small seem to be more tolerant towards violence from their counterparts. Some people still maintain that violence helps them tackle with improper behaviors of women; for example, they spend too much time glancing themselves at the mirror, do not cook the meal, take care of their families and talk back to the husbands. However, there are other ways to improve the situation instead of slapping or beating their women. Husbands can explain to the wives or give them a small gift and talk with them about happiness in their families. Moreover, domestic violence can lead to break-up in a family. According to Gender and Development Reseach Institute, 49.7% of families are broken up because of family violence (cited on Binh 2011). Also, it has no good effects on their children when they grow up. 2.3 Recent solutions to domestic violence Using violence in families is by no means humane and tolerable so it is necessary to find the solutions as soon as possible. However, in the face of this problem, both Vietnamese government and citizens must join hands to relieve the consequences of domestic violence in daily life. In term of the government, the very first thing they need to do is to educate their people. They should emphasize that domestic violence is not anyone elses problem; it is social so that people realize the seriousness of this matter. They also ought to explain clearly what domestic violence is, how it influences peoples lives and family tie. In addition, schools and healthcare centers need participate in this champagne. They can organize a meeting to talk about violence; hence, peoples awareness are raised at an early stage of their psychological development (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation ). In the long term, the government needs to put more efforts into eradicating poverty. It is important to teach people some kinds of jobs and lend citizens money with a low rate of interest so that they can earn their living. Moreover, it is necessary that each individual has a notion of reducing violence in their families. First, people should remain good relationship with intimate partners. Familys atmosphere must be comfortable, happy and peaceful so that house will be the most wanted place for everyone. When there is something wrong in family, the husband or the wife must know how to behave in order to calm down the other. Silence when in need is encouraged. Another solution is that women should understand more about domestic violence to protect themselves while it occurs. If women are abused, they should not keep silence. Authorities need to know this so that they can intervene and find the answers. Parents have to be aware that domestic violence has negative effects on their children and it is essential to respect the intimate partners.

Globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Introduction What is globalization? Globalisation is the integration of cultures and economies across geographical boarders. Globalisation has made trade and communication possible throughout the world in the shortest possible time. Compare and contrast the main features of globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The difference in globalisation in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are:- While free trade was imposed on the rest of the world markets in third world countries were opened simply because they were not independent nations. Direct foreign investments increased rapidly during 1870 to 1913. The first half of the nineteenth century saw free trade being practiced only by Britain. However, in the twentieth century government debt became tradable in the global market for financial assets. The similarities in globalization in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are:- In the nineteenth century international trade was attributed to trade liberalization, direct foreign investment increased rapidly during the nineteenth century. Lending at international bank was also substantial. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed a significant integration of international markets to provide a channel for portfolio investment flows. The cross-national ownership of securities including government bonds reached very high levels during this period. Also in the twentieth century there was an increase in the degree of openness in most countries, in international trade, investment and finance. While the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a phenomenal expansion in international trade flows. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/deglobalisation-what-is-it-and-why-britain-should-be-scared-1521674.html (accessed 01 November 2010 6:23 a.m.) What is deglobalisation? Deglobalisation is the disintegrations of the economies of the world to their individual status where they do not engage in trade, imports and exports with other countries. To what extent has the 2008 crisis and recession brought about deglobalisation? Globalisation brought with it free trade of goods and services between countries and boarders. Many persons left their countries of birth to migrate to other countries in search of a better life, nurses from as far as Trinidad were and still are being employed in England and America. Persons from anywhere in the world can go to America and enjoy a doubles which is a Caribbean (East Indian) delicacy. The debate on globalization continue as people try to make sure that the benefits of global trade outweigh the costs for all countries. However, with the recession of 2008 many developed and developing nations have felt the impact of the recession specifically in Europe and the United States. Recession is caused by inflation, where to much money is chasing to little goods. In Ireland, many home owners took out a second mortgage to purchase second homes. Regretably many of home owners were unable to repay these loan and the banks took control of thes properties. In many instances these homes were sold for less than the homeowner was owing to the financial institution. Many persons who migrated to these countries in search of a better standard of living and employment opportunities are now leaving these countries and returning to their country of birth. This is as a result of an increase of unemployment due to many companies being unable to pay its workforce and meet its overhead expenditures. Though economies of the world are experiencing economic recession, globalisation have to a large extent allowed many countries to survive since countries can still trade their goods and services with other countries with the hope of rebuilding their economies. To what extent do the positive aspects of globalisation outweigh its negative effects? According to Deepak Nayyar globalization is the expansion of economic transactions and the organisation of economic activities across the political boundaries of nation states. Globalisation is associated with increasing economic openness, growing economic independence and deepening economic integration in the world economy. Globalisation has allowed persons from all economic brackets to be exposed to what the world has to offer in terms of goods and services. Negative effects of globalization are:- Nayyar however, stated persons who cannot afford to purchase these goods and services are left frustration or alienation which can lead to increase in crime, violence and drugs. Some seek refuge in ethnic identities, cultural chauvinism. For example, in Trinidad and Tobago whenever an international performer is coming in there is usually a high incidents of robberies since persons who cannot afford to attend these show robs others in an attempt to do so. Globalisation have also resulted in a widening in the gap between the rich and the poor in the worlds population, as also between the rich and poor people within countries has widened. Income distribution within countries also worsened with globalization and income inequality increased. The incidence of poverty increased in most countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s and the 1990s. Nayyar further went on to state that much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia experiences a sharp rise in poverty during the 1990s. Unemployment in the industrialised countries has increased substantially since the early 1970s and remained at high levels since then. Due to trade liberalisation there has been an increase in wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers since the labour market being liberalised has also become highly competitive. An example many skilled construction workers from other caribbean countries and also China are being used locally in Trinidad in the construction section since there has been in short of this expertise in this area locally. M. Panic stated in the article negative issues with support what Nayyar also stated in his article the evidence of which are as follows:- Does Europe need neoliberal reforms? the extremely objectionable nature of the unregulated, free market version of the system was demonstrated globally in the 1930s with devastating consequences: its inherent tendency to prolonged and costly crises (the Great Depression, mass unemployment), social deprivation and division (extreme poverty for the many in the mass unemployment), social deprivation and division (extreme poverty for the many in the midst of great wealth for the few)à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ German economic growth and levels of unemployment, for so long among the most impressive in the industrialized world, were only slightly better. Again, empirical evidence in support of the neoliberal claim that unemployment in Germany was caused by over-regulation was found to be extremely weak (Fuchs and Schettkat, 2000, p. 238) Conclusion While, many world trade and export-led growth strategies are collapsing, surplus countries face big obstacles in expanding domestic demand, and many emerging market economies are in deep trouble. World trade is collapsing much faster than expected-and much faster than predicted on the basis of the past example of this can be seen in the United States and Europe specifically Ireland where many homeowners are unable to pay their mortgages. Globalisation have also resulted in the devaluation of the US dollar which is a direct impact of the recession that the country is presently facing. For any nation to be imbalance globally can only work to this country and its population disadvantage since the negative impacts are not only economic but also far reaching social issues. Therefore based on the information listed above I can conclude that the negative effects far outweigh the positive. APPENDIX A C:Documents and SettingsRAVidaleDesktopWorld trade volume rose in August after a dip in July; Eurozone only advanced market to see export growth; World industrial production also grew_filesWorld-trade-oct262010.jpg

Public Sentiments Concerning Chinese Immigration Essay -- Immigration

Public Sentiments Concerning Chinese Immigration In 1852, there were over 20,000 Chinese immigrants living in California (Franks). Americans reacted very negatively to this influx, and their negative sentiments were made apparent in the California Supreme Court’s People v. Hall verdict, which rendered Chinese testimony unreliable. Then, in 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States (Foner, 651). From the 1850s up to the Exclusion Act of 1882, Americans felt increasingly negative sentiments towards the Chinese. As illustrated through newspaper and magazine depictions along the Pacific Coast, the Americans perceived the Chinese as inferior and menacing and they felt threatened and invaded by their large numbers. In the image â€Å"Chinese Candy Man† from Harper’s Magazine, a Chinese man is depicted selling â€Å"rock canuy† to white children. This image illustrates how Americans viewed the Chinese as an intellectually inferior race. The Chinese man’s alleged skin tone is a very important feature because his skin is black. The skin tone illustrates how the Americans viewed the Chinese as an inferior race by categorizing them with blacks; in their eyes, the Chinese were subordinate like the slaves. The People vs. Hall verdict also reinforced this categorization: the California Supreme Court ruled that a white man could not be convicted on the testimony of a Chinese witness. Black slaves did not have the right to testify in court; this restriction was now being applied to Chinese people as well. This verdict claimed that they were intellectually unreliable and inferior to the proper white man, which is also shown in the illustrated Chinese ... ...ng with the first picture, it also depicts the Chinese as menacing and conniving people. These negative sentiments are also reinforced by events that occurred during the time, such as the previously mentioned Seclusion Act and the People v Hall trial. They also degrade the Chinese man by depicting him as a crawling creature and by categorizing them with the black slaves. Works Cited Franks, Joel. "The "Orient," Hawaii and Antebellum US to 1860." 29 Nov. 2011. Lecture. â€Å"The Chinese Candy Man.† 1868. [database on-line] (The Chinese in California, accessed 2 December 2011) ; available http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/cichome.html, image ID cubcic brk5353. â€Å"Amusing the Child.† 1882. [database on-line] (The Chinese in California, accessed 2 December 2011) ; available http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/cichome.html, image ID cubcic brk1522.

Roy Lichtenstein was the most visual of all The Pop Artist. Explain :: Art

Roy Lichtenstein was the most visual of all The Pop Artist. Explain why this may be true. Roy Lichtenstein led the way for pop artist’s and exploited it to the best that any artist could. Roy Lichtenstein led the way for pop artist’s and exploited it to the best that any artist could. Lichtenstein was born in New York in October 1923. Lichtenstein’s parents were middle class people, when he went to school art wasn’t on the curriculum. Although when he was young he did paint. Lichtenstein was and still is considered the most sophisticated pop artist around. Roy Lichtenstein was inspired by Picasso’s paintings; he studied them and learnt from them. In 1961 Roy Lichtenstein made use of the â€Å"Ben-Day dots†. This was the first time an artist had used this device. The â€Å"Ben-Day dots† were firstly mastered by Roy Lichtenstein. With the new invention of this device it made way for commercial use of it. Lichtenstein’s art was always fairly colorful and in most cases telling us a story. Reverie 1965: Roy Lichtenstein always enjoyed illustrating and implementing carton drawings into his work. Reflections of a Scream 1990: Reflections of a scream is illustrating to society how the world is today. The answer is Children. As you can see from the above two pieces of art, Roy Lichtenstein is a visual artist, the two pieces of art were created by the use of â€Å"Ben-day dots†, you will soon or if haven’t yet realized it Lichtenstein did all his art work using this device. The commercial use of Ben-day dots† allows advertising to take posters to the next step. Advertising could now have large scale posters on buildings and relatively cost effective. Lichtenstein wanted his art work to relate to items and places to the outside world. Roy Lichtenstein had on many occasions gone into a comic book store and buys hundreds just so he could read them and hopefully get inspired from them. He was a realist, didn’t expect much from other people. â€Å"Whaam† was created in 1966; this was a time when tensions were high. The cartoon and comic heroes were playing a vital role. Lichtenstein took these actions and manipulated them to his own personal mind of thinking. In many situations the out come was one of action, he wanted to appeal to the younger generation. â€Å"Whaam† does this. Lichtenstein revolutionized art it self. He modernized art with the use of pop art. Out of the three most well known artist’s (Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein) Lichtenstein is the most visual out of them. Roy Lichtenstein Explosion 1965-6 Explosion 1965 another action piece of Lichtenstein’s art, he started

Night World : The Chosen Chapter 15

The sound of her own voice sent Rashel spinning out of the light. It was as if she were emerging from deep water- from one world into another. Or as if she were re-entering her own body. For a moment everything was confusion, and Rashel wasn't sure of where she was or how she was positioned†¦ and then she felt her arms and legs and saw yellow light. Lamplight. She was in an upstairs room in a mansion on a private island, and Quinn was holding her. They had somehow ended up on the floor, half kneeling, half supported by the wall, their arms around each other, Rashel's head on his shoulder. She had no idea when he'd stopped biting her. She also had no idea how much time had passed. She coughed a little, shaken by what had just happened. That other place, with the light-it still seemed more real than the hard shiny boards of the floor underneath her and the white walls of the room. But it also seemed encased in its own reality. Like a dream. She didn't know if they would ever be able to get back there again. â€Å"Quinn?† He was Quinn again. Not John. â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Do you know what happened? I mean, do you understand it?† â€Å"I think,† he said, and his voice was gentle and precise, â€Å"that sharing blood can strengthen a telepathic bond. I've always been able to block it out when I fed before, but†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He didn't finish. â€Å"But it happened that other time. Or something like it happened. When I first met you.† â€Å"Yes. Well. Well, I think it's†¦ there's something called†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He gave up and resorted to nonverbal communication. There's something called the soulmate principle. I've never believed in it. I've laughed at people who talked about it. I would have bet my life that- â€Å"What is it, Quinn?† Rashel had heard of it, too, especially recently. But it wasn't something from her world, and she wanted a Night Person to explain. It's the idea that everyone has one and just one soul-mate in the world, and that if you find them, you recognize them immediately. And†¦ well, that's that. â€Å"But it's not supposed to happen between humans and Night People. Right?† There are some people who think that it is happening-now-for some reason-especially between humans and Night People. The Redferns seem to be getting it in particular. There was a pause, then Quinn said aloud, â€Å"I should probably apologize to some of them, actually.† He sounded bemused. Rashel sat up, which was difficult. She didn't want to let go of Quinn. He kept hold of her fingers, which helped a little. He looked more mussed than he had down near the wharf, his neat hair disordered, his eyes large and dark and dazed. She met his gaze directly. â€Å"You think we're soulmates?† â€Å"Well.† He blinked. â€Å"Do you have a better explanation?† â€Å"No.† She took a breath. â€Å"Do you still want to make me a vampire?† He stared at her, and something flamed and then fell in pain in his eyes. For an instant he looked as if she'd hit him-then all she could see was regret. â€Å"Oh, Rashel† In one motion he caught her and held her. His face was pressed to her hair. She could feel him breathing like some stricken creature-and then she felt him regain control, grabbing discipline from somewhere, wrapping himself in it. He rested his chin on her head. â€Å"I'm sorry you have to ask that, but I understand. I don't want to make you a vampire. I want-â€Å" I want you to be what you were two minutes ago. That happy, that idealistic†¦. He sounded as if it were something that had been lost forever. But Rashel felt a new happiness, and a new confidence. He had changed. She could sense how much he had changed already. They were in the real world, and he wasn't raving about needing to kill her, or her needing to kill him. â€Å"I just wanted to be sure,† she said. She tightened her own arms around him. â€Å"I don't know what's going to happen-but as long as we're right together, I think I can face it.† I think we live or die together from now on, Quinn said simply. Yes, Rashel thought. She could still feel lingering sadness in Quinn, and confusion in herself, but they were right together. She didn't need to doubt him anymore. They trusted each other. â€Å"We have to do something about the people downstairs,† she said. â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"But we can't kill them.† â€Å"No. There's been enough killing. It has to stop.† Quinn sounded like a swimmer who'd been tumbling in a riptide, and whose feet had finally found solid ground. Rashel sat up to look at him. â€Å"But we can't just let them walk out of here. What if they try it again? I mean, whoever set this bloodfeast up†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She suddenly realized that she had asked everybody else, but not him. â€Å"Quinn, who did set this up?† He smiled, a faint echo of his old savage smile. Now it was grim and self-mocking. â€Å"I don't know.† â€Å"You don't know?† â€Å"Some vampire who wanted to get the made vampires together. But I've never met him. Lily was the go-between, but I'm not sure she knows either. She only spoke to him on the phone. Neither of us asked a lot of questions. We were doing it for the money.† He said it flatly, not sparing himself. And to be rebellious, Rashel thought. To be as bad and as damned as possible, because you figured you might as well. She said, â€Å"Whoever it is might just go somewhere else and find somebody else to get his slaves for him. Those seven guys could be having a new bloodfeast next month.† â€Å"That has to be stopped, too,† Quinn said. â€Å"How to stop it without violence, that's the question.† His fingers were still tight on Rashel's, but he was staring into the distance, lost in grim and competent thought. It was a new side of Quinn. Rashel had seen him in almost every mood from despairing to manic, but she had never worked with him before. Now she realized that he was going to make a strong and resourceful ally. Suddenly Quinn seemed to focus. â€Å"I've got it,† he said. He smiled suddenly, mocking but without the bitterness. â€Å"When violence won't work, there's no other choice but to try persuasion.† â€Å"That's not funny.† â€Å"It's not meant to be.† â€Å"You're going to say, ‘Please don't kill any more young girls'?† â€Å"I'm going to say, ‘Please don't kill any more young girls or I'll report you to the Joint Council.' Listen, Rashel.† He took her by the arms, his eyes flashing with excitement. â€Å"I have some authority in the Night World-I'm the Redfern heir. And Hunter Redfern has more. Between us, we can make all kinds of trouble for these made vampires.† â€Å"But Fayth-a friend of mine-said they were all so powerful.† In the intensity of the moment, Rashel almost missed the fact that she'd just called Fayth her friend. Quinn was shaking his head. â€Å"No, you have to understand. These aren't rogues, they're Night World citizens. And what they're doing is completely illegal. You can't just kill a bunch of girls from one area without permission. Slavery's illegal, bloodfeasts are illegal. And no matter how powerful they are, they can't stand up against the Night World Council.† â€Å"But-â€Å" â€Å"We threaten them with exposure to the Council. With exposure to Hunter Redfern-and to the lamia. The lamia will go crazy at the thought of made vampires getting together in some kind of alliance. They'll take it as a threat of civil war.† It might work, Rashel was thinking. The made vampires were just individuals-they'd be up against whole lamia families. Especially against the Redfern family, the oldest and most respected clan of vampires. â€Å"Everybody's scared of Hunter Redfern,† she said slowly. â€Å"He's got tremendous influence. He practically owns the Council. He could run them out of the Night World if he wanted. I think they'll listen.† â€Å"You really do think of him as a father, don't you?† Rashel said, her voice soft. She searched Quinn's eyes. â€Å"Whatever you say about hating him-you respect him.† â€Å"He's not as bad as most. He has†¦ honor, I guess. Usually.† And he's a New Englander, Rashel thought. That means he's against vice. She considered another moment, then she nodded. Her heart was beating fast, but she could feel a smile breaking on her face. â€Å"Let's try persuasion.† They stood-and then they paused a moment, looking at each other. We're strong, Rashel thought. We've got unity. If anyone can do this, we can. She picked up her knife almost absent-mindedly. It was a piece of art, a valued possession, and she didn't want to lose it. They walked down the stairs side by side. Music was still blasting from the gathering room at the end of the hall. It hadn't been that long, Rashel realized. The whole world had changed since she'd been in this hallway-but somehow it had all happened in minutes. Now, Quinn said silently before they went in. There shouldn't be any danger-/ don't think they'll be stupid enough to attack me-but be alert anyway. Rashel nodded. She felt cool and businesslike, and she thought she was perfectly rational. It was only later that she realized they had walked into the room like little lambs into the tiger's lair, still dizzy and reeling from the discovery of love. Quinn went in first and she could hear voices stop as he did. Then she was walking through the door, into that ruddy flickering room with shadows dancing on the walls. And there they were again, those handsome young guys who looked like a TV-series ensemble. They were looking at Quinn with various expressions of interest and surprise. When they saw her, the expressions sharpened to pleasure and inquiry. â€Å"Hey, Quinn!† â€Å"Hi there, Quinn.† â€Å"So you've arrived at last. You've kept us waiting long enough.† That from the dark one who was looking at his watch. Quinn said, â€Å"Turn off the music.† Someone went to a built-in mahogany cabinet and turned off an expensive stereo. Quinn was looking around the room, as if to appraise each of them. â€Å"Campbell,† he said, nodding slightly. â€Å"Radhu. Azarius. Max.† â€Å"So you're the one who brought us here,† Campbell said. He had rusty hair and a sleepy smile. â€Å"We've all been dying to find out.† â€Å"Who's that?† someone else added, peering at Rashel. â€Å"The first course?† Quinn smiled fractionally, with a look that made the guy who'd asked step backward. â€Å"No, she's not the first course,† he said softly. â€Å"In fact, unfortunately, all the courses have disappeared.† There was a silence. Everyone stared at him. Then the guy with the silver-blond hair said, â€Å"What?† â€Å"They've all-just-disappeared.† Quinn made an expressive gesture. â€Å"Escaped. Vanished.† Another silence. Rashel didn't like this one. She was beginning to get an odd impression from the group, as if she were in a room, not with people, but with animals that had been kept past their feeding time. â€Å"What the hell are you talking about?† the dark one, the one Quinn had called Azarius, said tightly. â€Å"What kind of joke is this?† Campbell added. â€Å"It's not a joke. The girls who were brought for the bloodfeast are gone,† Quinn said slowly and distinctly, just in case anybody hadn't gotten it yet. Then he said, â€Å"And as a matter of fact, it's a good thing.† â€Å"A good thing? Quinn, we're starving.† â€Å"They can't have gone too far,† the silver blond said. â€Å"After all, it's an island. Let's go and-† â€Å"Nobody's going anywhere,† Quinn said. Rashel moved closer to him. She was still nervous. These guys were on the edge of getting out of control. But she trusted Quinn, and she could tell they were afraid of him. And, she told herself, they'll be even more afraid in a minute. â€Å"Look, Quinn, if you brought us here to-† â€Å"I didn't bring you here. In fact, I don't know who brought you here, but it doesn't matter. I've got the same thing to say to all of you. There isn't going to be any bloodfeast, now or ever. And anybody who objects to that can take their problem to the Council.† That shut everyone up. They simply stared at Quinn. It was clearly the last thing they expected. â€Å"In fact, if you don't want the Council to hear about this, I'd advise everybody to go home quietly and pretend it never happened. And to have a headache the next time anybody asks you to a bloodfeast.† This silence was broken by somebody muttering, â€Å"You dirty†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Meanwhile, Rashel's mind had begun to tick. Just how were these guys going to go home quietly? There weren't any boats. Unless the host brought one when he came-if he came. And where was he, anyway? And where was Lily? â€Å"Quinn,† she said softly. But somebody else was speaking. â€Å"You'd tell the Council?† a lean tough-looking guy with brown hair asked. â€Å"No, I'd let Hunter Redfern tell the Council,† Quinn said. â€Å"And I don't really think you want that. He might put it in a bad light. Raise your hands everybody who thinks Hunter Redfern would approve of this little party.† â€Å"Do I get a vote?† The voice came from the doorway. It was deeper than the voices of the young guys in the room. Rashel recognized the sound of danger instinctively and turned. And later it seemed to her that even before she turned, she knew what she would see. A tall man standing easily, with a girl and a child behind him in the shadows. He was colored by the flickering ruby light of the fire, but Rashel could still see that his hair was red as blood. And his eyes were golden. Golden like hawk's eyes, like amber. Like Lily Redfern's eyes. Why hadn't she realized that before? The face was a face she would never forget. It came to her every night in her dreams. It was the man who'd killed her mother. The man who'd chased her through the climbing structure, promising her ice cream. All at once, Rashel was five years old again, weak and helpless and terrified. â€Å"Hello, Quinn,† Hunter Redfern said. Quinn was absolutely still beside Rashel. She had the feeling that he couldn't even think. And she understood why. She'd seen into his mind; she knew what Hunter represented to him. Stern necessity, even ruthlessness, but honor, too. And he was just now finding out that that was all a lie. â€Å"Don't look so upset,† Hunter said. He stepped forward with an amiable smile. His golden eyes were fixed on Quinn; he hadn't even glanced at Rashel yet. â€Å"There's a reason for all this.† He gestured to the vampires in the room, and his voice was gentle, rational. â€Å"We need allies in the Council; the lamia are getting too lax. Once I've explained it all to you, you'll understand.† The way he'd made Quinn understand that Quinn had to be a vampire, Rashel thought. The way he'd made Quinn understand that humans were the enemy. She was shaking all over, but there was a white-hot fire inside her that burned through the fear. â€Å"Was there a reason for killing my mother?† she said. The golden eyes turned toward her. Hunter looked mildly startled. Beside her, Quinn's head jerked around. â€Å"I was only five, but I remember it all,† Rashel said. She took a step closer to Hunter. â€Å"You killed her just like that-snapped her neck. Was there a reason for killing Timmy? He was four years old and you drank his blood. Was there a reason for killing my great-aunt? You set a fire to get me, but it got her.† She stopped, staring into those predatory golden eyes. She'd searched for this man for twelve years, and now he didn't seem to recognize her. â€Å"What's wrong, did you hunt too many little kids to keep track of?† she said. â€Å"Or are you so crazy you believe your own public image?† Quinn whispered, â€Å"Rashel†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She turned. â€Å"I'm sure. He was the one.† In that instant, she saw Quinn's face harden implacably against the man who'd made him a Red-fern. His eyes went dark as black holes-no light escaped. Rashel suddenly had the feeling of glacial cold. Look into eyes like that and what you saw alone might kill you, she thought. But she had her own fire inside her, her own vengeance. The knife was in her waistband. If she could just get close enough†¦. She moved toward Hunter Redfern again. â€Å"You destroyed my life. And you don't even remember, do you?† â€Å"I remember,† the little shadow beside him said. And then the world flipped and Rashel felt the floor slipping away from her. The child behind Hunter was walking into the light-and suddenly she could smell plastic and old socks, and she could feel vinyl under her hands. Memories were flooding up so quickly that she was drowning in them. All she could say was â€Å"Oh, Timmy. Oh, God, Timmy.† He was standing there, just as she'd seen him last, twelve years ago. Shiny dark hair and wide tilted blue eyes. Except that the eyes weren't exactly a child's eyes. They were some strange and terrible combination of child and adult. There was too much knowledge in them. â€Å"You left me,† Timmy said. â€Å"You didn't care about me.† Rashel sank her teeth into her lip, but tears spilled anyway. â€Å"I'm sorry†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Nobody cared about me,† Timmy said. He reached up to take Hunter's sleeve. â€Å"No humans, anyway. Humans are vermin.† He smiled his old sweet smile. Hunter looked down at Timmy, then up at Quinn. â€Å"It's amazing how quickly they learn. You haven't met Timmy, have you? He's been living in Vegas, but I think he can be useful here.† He turned to Rashel and his eyes were pure evil. â€Å"Of course I remember you. It's just that you've changed a little; you've gotten older. You're different from us, you see.† â€Å"You're weak,† Lily put in. She had stepped forward, too, to stand beside her father. Now she linked her arm in his. â€Å"You're short-lived. You're not very bright, and not very important. In a word, you're†¦ dinner.† Hunter smiled. â€Å"Well put.† Then he dropped the smile and said to Quinn, â€Å"Step away from her, son.† Quinn moved slightly, closer to Rashel. â€Å"This is my soulmate,† he said, in his softest and most disturbing voice. â€Å"And we're leaving together.† Hunter Redfern stared at him for several long moments. Something like disbelief flickered in his eyes. Then he recovered and said quietly, â€Å"What a shame.† Behind Rashel there were noises of stirring. It was as if a hot wind from the savanna had blown in, and the lions had caught its scent. â€Å"You know, I was already worried about you, Quinn,† Hunter said. â€Å"Last summer you let Ash and his sisters get away with running out on the enclave. Don't think I didn't notice that. You're getting lax, getting soft. There's too much of that going around lately.† Stand back to back, Quinn told Rashel. She was already moving into position. The vampires were forming a ring, encircling them. She could see smiles on every face. â€Å"And Lily says you've been strange these last few days-moody. She said you seemed preoccupied with a human girl.† Rashel drew her knife. The vampires were watching her with the fixed attention of big felines watching their prey. Absolute focus. â€Å"But the soulmate idea-that's really the last straw. It's like a disease infecting our people. You understand why I have to stamp it out.† Hunter paused. â€Å"For old time's sake, let's finish this quickly.† A voice that wasn't Quinn's added in Rashel's mind, / told you I'd see you later. Rashel stood on the balls of her feet, letting Hunter's words slide off her and drip away. She couldn't think about him right now. She had to concentrate on awareness, open her energy, and free her mind. This was going to be the biggest fight of her fife, and she needed zanshin. But even as she found it, a small voice inside her was whispering the truth. There were simply too many vampires. She and Quinn couldn't hold them all off at once.