Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman (cited) Essay Example for Free

Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman (cited) Essay Willy and Nora: Tragic Heroes or Home-wreckers? No one has a perfect life. Despite what Aaron Spelling and his friends in the media might project to society today, no ones life is perfect. Everyone has conflicts that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these conflicts can be just as varied as the people themselves. Some procrastinate and ignore their problems as long as they can, while others attack problems to get them out of the way as soon as possible. The Lowman and Helmer families have a number of problems that they deal with in different ways, which proves their similarities and differences. Both Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman and Nora Helmer, protagonist of Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House experience an epiphany where they realize that they were not the person the thought they were: while Willys catharsis brings about his death, Noras brings her to a new life; hers. Both characters flaws bring about their departure from their respective families as well. They are both overly concerned with the appearances they and their families present to society: as a result they both project false images to others. From their appearance, both seem to be involved in stable marriages and appear to be going places. Willys job as a traveling salesman seems stable (although we never know what it is he sells) when he tells his family that he knocked em cold in Providence, slaughtered em in Boston (Miller 1228). It is not until Willys wife, Linda tells us that he drives 700 miles and when he gets there, no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him (Miller 1241). If thats not enough to convince readers of his failure on the job, the fact that he gets fired after working for the same company for 36 years cements his incompetency in the business world to readers. While Nora does not work in the business world, (few woman, if any did over 120 years ago) her failure to take care of her responsibilities becomes quite evident as well. See more: citing an essay When the play opens and Nora enters with a Christmas tree and presents for the children, she gives off the impression of a good mother trying hard to prepare a great Christmas for her family. Upon further analysis we see that Noras duties, in general, are restricted to caring for the children, doing housework, and working on her needlepoint. Nora cannot complete these duties even with the full-time help of Anne Marie, a housekeeper who cleans up after Nora just as much as the children. When Nora and Kristine are having a discussion towards  the start of the play, Nora informs her friend that, Im so happy and relieved [with my marriage]. I must say its lovely to have plenty of money and not have to worry. Isnt it? (Ibsen 1119). The rosy picture she painted of her family and marriage are in stark contrast to the stranger of a man (Ibsen 1168) she refers to her husband as. We realize that she had not been living her life at all; rather the life that her husband wanted her to live. Whi le both Willy and Nora succeed in giving of the appearance of being competent, efficient and helpful family members who contribute to the well being of their respective families, they prove otherwise as the plays progress. While the two plays take place nearly 100 years apart, are set on different continents and each have completely different family members, both engage in lies and deceit that hurt their families; after which each protagonist leaves their family. Not only does Willy lie about his performance on the job, he lies about his faulty car as well. He tells his family that the Studebaker keeps malfunctioning when in reality we find out through Linda that he has been deliberately trying to kill himself. The biggest way in which Loman deceives his family is by cheating on his wife while away for work in Boston. When his eldest son discovers his fathers unfaithfulness, he loses all trust for his father, and Biffs life pretty much goes downhill from there. Willy Lomans lies, deceit, unfaithfulness have resulted in huge problems for his family. Nora also starts trouble in her household through lies and deceit. Noras crime of forgery is not even a crime in her mind; she does not realize that the law does not take into account peoples motivations behind their actions. While she knows that Krogstad has been associated with shady law practices, she does not realize that his crime was on the same level, if not less illegal than the one that she has committed. When Tourvald opens the letter and finds out about her crime, he goes ballistic, and cannot believe that his own wife could be capable of such a crime. This is ultimately the reason / situation that helps Nora realize that she must leave her family in order to begin to live her own life. But Nora even lies about the little things in life such as the eating of macaroons (Ibsen 1126). Her husband forbade her from eating them on account that they will rot her teeth, and when she is seen eating them in her house, she says that they are a gift from Kristine, which is a lie. Both Willy and Noras lies and deceitfulness frustrate their families to the  point where each protagonist much leave their family; although Willys departure is his death, Noras is the start of her real life. Both main characters also use an escape mechanism to leave reality when they realize that their lives are on the wrong path. When Loman starts to realize that his pride and joy in life, Biff, is a lazy bum (Mille r 1218) he begins to talk to himself (Miller 1221). These mental lapses bring Loman to a happier place and time, when his kids were young and innocent and he thought that the best part of his life lay still ahead. This acts almost as a defense mechanism against the pains of reality for Willy. In the final scene, after Biff tells his father that he is a dime a dozen and that the Loman name really doesnt mean much, Willy engages in the ultimate escape mechanism; suicide. Although it may appear on the surface to be a selfish and coldhearted move to spite his family, he actually did it so that his family may live a better life with money he thinks they will receive from his life insurance policy. When faced with the harsh pains of reality, Nora also uses defense / escape mechanisms to ignore the problems at hand first, then to conquer them in the end. She believes that she has done nothing wrong, and that if what she has done is illegal, that her good intentions will nullify the illegality of her forgery. When Krogstad informs her otherwise, tells her the possible repercussions of her act, and ultimately gives her an ultimatum, this is her first touch of reality outside of the dolls house that she lives in. To cope with the harshness outside of this dolls house, she immediate ly retreats back inside and attempts to distract herself with Christmas decorations (Ibsen 1133). She uses the tree and presents to distract her from her problems, and tells the nursemaid Anne Marie that shes too busy to play with her kids who want to see her because she must try to distance her mind from the subject at hand. Here she is only making the problem worse by not dealing with it. When she finally realizes that her main duty [is] to [her]self (Ibsen 1166), and that she has been living life according to what her father and husband have wanted rather than what she has wanted, Noras epiphany is complete. She knows that the only possible solution that can work for her is to leave right away. Willy and Nora both escape their problems first by drifting away with mental distractions, then when they fully realize their problems, they both must physically leave their families. For Willy this means death, for Nora, the  start of (a new) life. Willy and Nora share a fatal flaw: they try to make others happy before making themselves happy. All that Willy ever wanted in life was to be well-liked and for his sons to follow in his footsteps. Their lives focused too much on fulfilling others rather than themselves, and in the end this flaw led to their departure from each of their respective families. When Charley asks Willie when the hell are you ever going to grow up? and Biff declares that we never told the truth in this house for 10 minutes (Miller 1280) we realize that Willy will never grow up and that he must leave his family because he will never grow up and that nearly his whole life has been a farce. Similarly, when Nora tells her husband that the only way he (and her) can only change if Tourvald has his doll taken away (Ibsen 1168) we realize that Noras life too has been a farce and that she must leave in order to begin her own life.

Experiences of Afro Caribbeans and Asian migrants to Britain

Experiences of Afro Caribbeans and Asian migrants to Britain The second half of the twentieth century saw a transformation of British society in which peoples from areas of the world that had formerly constituted colonies of the British Empire migrated to Britain in large enough numbers to have a significant impact upon the host community.   Since Elizabethan times, Britain had been host to significant numbers of black people. Yet their impact had never been felt as profoundly as it was in the late twentieth century, when many parts of Britain became what successive governments chose to term ‘multicultural.  Ã‚   This change did not come about without resistance and upheaval.   The impact of migration was often traumatic, especially upon those individuals who had left their homes to seek a different life in what they had looked upon as the Mother Country.The term ‘Mother Country is well-known and widely used.   However, during the period of the British Empire it was used as a trope that assumed a very particular meaning whe n applied to the relationship between the colonial power and its dependent territories.   During the nineteenth century, the expansion of the Empire was accompanied by a discourse that cast Britain in the role of parent and protector, as may be seen in visual products of the period, such as the Punch cartoon from 21 April 1894 in which John Bull is depicted discovering a black baby on his front doorstep, wrapped in a cloth marked ‘Uganda, and with the caption: ‘THE BLACK BABY.   Mr Bull: â€Å"What, another!! Well, I suppose I must take it in!!†Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   David Dabydeen, in his first collection of poetry Slave Song (1984), includes an illustration of ‘Britannia and the Natives, from a publication dated 1814, in which Britannia is shown on a raised pedestal surrounded by kneeling and supplicating black people with, in the background, the figure of Justice with her scales.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Britannia is thus configured as the ideal mother.   Such im ages gave Britain a benevolent and protective role (albeit with the reluctant undertones of John Bull), whilst to the colonies there were attributed the characteristics of immaturity, loyalty and submissiveness. However, in the history of Britains relations with its colonies, there is copious evidence of a breach in this unwritten contract of mutual loyalty and support.   At home and abroad, Britain exploited, rejected and abused the ‘Children of the Empire, yet the bonds were not easily broken and the twentieth century saw a significant number of colonial (or ex-colonial) peoples seeking a first-hand encounter with Britain.The growth of migrant communities has been termed ‘diaspora, a term that was   borrowed from its traditional role in describing the dispersal of Jewish people, and it carries with it ideas of banishment and trauma, suggesting ‘a linkage asserted in the context of exile from a homeland, and a unity maintained in varying circumstances confronting a scattered population. Beginning with the slave trade and continuing with indentured labour and the economic migrations of the later twentieth century, the British Empire was a significant force in the global migrations of successive communities of African and Asian peoples.   Postcolonial literature and the theories that it has produced addresses the issue of migration and the dismantling of the European imperial and colonial enterprise.There are two important strands to postcolonial discourse that, rather than opposing one another, are often overlapping and inter-related: the first is one that might be termed pessimistic in that it concentrates on the debilitating effects of colonialism and the racism with which it went hand in hand, and the second is a more optimistic view of the transformative power of migration discourses that reveal that ‘truth is relative and that the shifting viewpoints of ‘outsiders and minorities have more to reveal about modern life than a totalising and deterministic central power.  Ã‚   The ‘pessimistic viewpoint is usually one that is concerned with militant protest and the recovery of history and culture that had previously been denigrated and undermined and it has to be seen in the context of the negative effects of loss and dislocation suffered under the colonial system.   Any examination of migration must devote attention to the economic and social conditions which cause migrant peoples to seek opportunities away from their home communities and the structures of colonialism were particularly conducive to population movements, usually forced or encouraged by Britain for its own economic advantage.   The late twentieth century migration of Caribbean and Asian people to Britain was initiated by Britain for economic reasons and was accomplished by the combined mechanisms of active government policy and the poor living conditions which many hoped to escape. It is clear that the economic rationale for the system of colonialism was exploitation and colonies inevitably remained underdeveloped because they were used as sources of cheap raw materials. Poverty was endemic; work was unskilled, low paid and intermittent; the reliance on foreign capital gave overseas companies a stranglehold over the economy; processed goods were all imported, including most staple food stuffs; housing was overcrowded and lacking in sanitation; the child labour force was large; spending on education was low and illiteracy was widespread .  Ã‚  Ã‚   The neglect of any political development towards self-determination and independence was also a feature of twentieth century British colonialism: executive control was centralised in the British parliament and, prior to the independence movements of the nineteen sixties, any expression of local government was chiefly confined to the representatives of the colonial power.  Ã‚   The denial of the cultural heritage of the black peoples of the Empire was also a vital part of the colonising process.   It particularly affected those who were able to become educated through the system of providing scholarships to the most able pupils, who continued their studies to secondary and sometimes university level.   All education was dictated by European standards French, Spanish, Latin, English literature, English history were all taught, whilst local history and geography were ignored.   The language of education was standard English: local accents, vocabularies and grammatical constructions were denied a voice.   The intention was to inculcate a sense of loyalty and belonging to Britain, creating a local educated elite whose knowledge and values were determined by colonial rather than national standards.  Ã‚  Ã‚   The long-term effect of this has been variously interpreted: Caribbean writer Kenneth Ramchand has written of a ‘cultural void‘   a nd poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite has referred to the ‘fragmented culture‘   of the Caribbean.   Yet Amon Saba Saakana claims that the indigenous communities retained many of their African characteristics and were in conflict with the imposed colonial culture official culture may have been European, but many aspects of the alternative African culture remained intact, even though under siege.  Ã‚  Ã‚   Such diversity of opinion illustrates the dilemma of a society which had traditionally been unable to develop any real perception of itself, except in the terms dictated by an imperial foreign power.   It is impossible to ignore the fact that, for the first generations of twentieth century colonial and postcolonial writers, the system under which they were educated was colonial in outlook and many of them continue to be preoccupied by their responses to European influence and the artefacts of European culture.   For the individual growing up in a colonial society, the difficulty of developing any real sense of self was compounded by the constant conflict between the standards and values of the indigenous community and the official norms imposed by the ruling power; a dual sense of perception was often the result of these competing discourses.   The image of a psyche that is alienated, divided, open to exploitation, overawed and unable to assert itself in the face of the imperial aggressor particularly pervaded the earlier literature which was concerned with migration (for example in Jean Rhyss Voyage in the Dark or V.S. Naipauls The Mimic Men). The twentieth century had thus perpetuated its own version of the nineteenth century discourse that figures the colonial subject as child-like and in need of parental protection.   Although the historical evidence suggests the contrary that, in the Caribbean at least, colonialism was aggressively imposed and required the stationing of quite large garrisons of troops to suppress opposition throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries  Ã‚   nonetheless, until quite recently the belief in the passivity and powerlessness of the local population was widely held and has found its way into literature.   The myth of British superiority therefore had to be confronted when migrants had a firsthand experience of Britain and it is the dismantling of this myth that can be seen as a vital aspect of the postcolonial literary project.   One of the seminal texts of postcolonial literary theory is entitled The Empire Writes Back and this aspect of   ‘writing back t o the imperial power, when previously colonised peoples create work which ‘adopts, adapts, and often rejects the established European models has become a key idea in postcolonial literature.  Ã‚  Ã‚   From this idea of the liberating of postcolonial voices and the opening up of a new form of discourse a second, more optimistic, strand of thought has developed that is particularly concerned with the postcolonial experience of migration.   For writers such as Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi, the newly emergent identities of migrants can be sites of excitement, new possibilities, and even privilege. The migrant seems in a better position than others to realise that all systems of knowledge, all views of the world, are never totalising, whole or pure, but incomplete, muddled and hybrid.   To live as a migrant may well evoke the pain of loss and of not being firmly rooted in a secure place; but it is also to live in a world of immense possibility with the realisation that new knowledges and ways of seeing can be constructed out of the myriad combinations of the ‘scraps‘ which Rushdie describes knowledges which challenge the authority of older ideas of rootedness and fixity. The cultural commentator Homi K Bhabha, in his book The Location of Culture emphasises this notion of marginality and regards the crossing of boundaries as an exciting new departure in the construction of identity, not merely in terms of the individual, but also for communities.   The migrant has a crucial role:Standing at the border, the migrant is empowered to intervene actively in the transmission of cultural inheritance or tradition (of both the home and the host land) rather than passively accept its venerable customs and pedagogical wisdom. The argument is that hybridity, liminality and the postcolonial condition are positive and productive and it forms the basis of a more optimistic reaction to the essentially negative history of slavery, Empire and colonisation.   However, it is possible for this approach to be seen as over-optimistic, in that it is produced from a cosmopolitan and educated elite (Rushdies experience of migration consisted in being educated at a top British public school and later joining the celebrity literary society of London and New York).   Smith warns that, for many migrants, ‘disconnection is not necessarily a comfortable state of being and that there is a danger in celebrating a very privileged form of mobility and in ignoring typical, everyday experience of localized forms of control and resistance. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the first substantial number of Caribbean migrants travelled to Britain on the S.S. Empire Windrush in 1948, and were greeted at Tilbury Dock by newspaper reporters whose banner headlines read ‘Welcome Home‘.  Ã‚   The idea of Britain as ‘home was one which had been deliberately encouraged in the British Empire and had served to alienate colonial peoples from their actual homelands.   Once in Britain, the idea of home was transposed onto the places that had been left behind.   Home therefore became a contradictory idea and was displaced from actuality into the imagination, never in the here-and-now, but always in the desired future or the remembered past.   John McLeod utilises Salman Rushdies essay ‘Imaginary Homelands to argue that the migrant experiences the concept of home as ‘primarily a mental construct built from the odds and ends of memory that survive from the past,  Ã‚  Ã‚   yet it is a lso true to say that, for many migrants, ‘home had always had a dual aspect: it was partly situated in the the ideologically determined concept that was the originating location of British education, law, language and culture but it was also located in their ancestral homelands in Asia or Africa.   The migrant experience is therefore one of liminality, poised on the threshold, never fully occupying the space called ‘home.   Just as identity within the colonial context was a contested site of contradictions, so the effect of migration on identity has become a recurrent theme of tension and conflict.   The ways in which postcolonial writers have found methods of replying and re-writing, rejecting, utilising and transforming European traditions and canons of literature has been complicatedly affected by migration.   As Anne McClintock remarks, the ‘tenacious legacies of imperialism continue to dictate ‘the sanctioned binaries colonizer-colonized, self-other, dominance-resistance, metropolis-colony, colonial-postcolonial, making strategic opposition problematic: ‘such binaries run the risk of simply inverting, rather than overturning, dominant notions of power‘.  Ã‚   The existence of these binaries is often explored thematically in the literature and can be detected in the oppositions of the past and the present; the places from and to which the migration occurs; the wider so ciety and the individual; the language and culture of two (or more) places.   The perpetual tension created by the contradictions of postcolonial experience is explored through these oppositional themes.   The sense of self and the identity of the migrant is thus a divided one and, whether optimistic or pessimistic in outlook, the creative fertility of this division is what the postcolonial writer seeks to explore. By reading a few examples of postcolonial literature it is possible to weigh the positive and negative strands of theory and to explore to what extent the writers demonstrate that the contradictions and complications of migration and the muddle and pain of rootlessness have been outweighed by the excitement of discovering a fertile site of new identity. In the discussion that follows, the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Grace Nichols will be explored, together with David Dabydeens novel The Intended and Ayub Khan-Dins play and film East is East.   Not every work will necessarily be discussed in each chapter, as the different literary works exemplify the experience of migration in differing ways.   However, the thematic concerns of all of these works will, it is hoped, be seen to be so closely intertwined that each chapter will represent a facet of the whole. The contrasting experiences of the past and present of the migrants experience is a common theme within much of the literature of migration.   As has been previously discussed, the colonial past was a brutalising political system.   David Dabydeen has taken up the theme of migration in Caribbean literature in terms of the shattering of illusions, ‘trauma and alienation‘, ‘personal disintegration and ‘shared vulnerability and dependence‘.  Ã‚   His novel The Intended is intensely concerned with the colonial past and he uses Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness as its inspiration and organising theme.   Dabydeens view of Conrads novel can be summarised by his comments from his A Readers Guide to West Indian and Black British Writing:Conrads Heart of Darkness offers a powerful denunciation of the horrors of Imperialism in its depiction of the cruelty of Europeans and the decimation of native Africans.   In the greed for ivory and quick profit, life is smashed up and squandered. Dabydeen comments on the confusion, grotesqueness and absurdity depicted in the novel as the hallmarks of imperialism and he contrasts the brutal reality with the dreams and aspirations which had originally impelled it.   The figure of Kurtz degenerates from noble idealism to a squalid end:At the beginning, he is a classical missionary figure, full of noble ideals about torch-bearing, about setting the bush alight with the concepts of European civilization. †¦ Instead of the fulfilment of these burning ideals, Kurtz degenerates into an emaciated figure crawling on all fours and the only burning that takes place in the novel is fire which destroys the grass shed and which exposes the Europeans as ineffectual buffoons in their attempts to control it.   Conrads theme is the turning of a dream into a sort of confused nightmare and Dabydeen has used this idea as the theme of his own novel.   For Dabydeens migrants, the journey from Europe to Africa is reversed, but their migration from their homelands to London, the heart of Empire, has a similarly brutalising and corrupting effect.   They also experience a descent into corruption, as they become increasingly involved in prostitution and pornography.   Whilst the desire to exploit the commodity of ivory is the motivating force for Conrads empire builders, Dabydeen turns this desire into an exploitation of white female flesh as a commodity.   Dabydeen has used Kurtzs name for his fiancà ©e ‘the intended as an ironic title for his own book in order to highlight the gap between aspiration and actuality.   The narrators comment to his girlfriend, Janet, reveals to him and to the reader this gap: ‘But you are fragrant, you are everything I intended, I blurted out, the words seeming to come from nowhere, and as soon as they were uttered, sounding foolish.   In one accidental sentence I had finally confessed all the dreams that I had stuttered out to her in a year of meetings, always trying to structure the expression of my desire for her so as to make it impersonal, philosophic, universal, but always failing, my plain needs leaking through the cracks in words. However, in this very ability to articulate himself, the narrator, like Conrads Marlow, shows him able to distance himself and thus survive the brutality that surrounds him.   This is in contrast to figure of Joseph, who, in committing suicide by setting light to himself, recalls the futility of Kurtzs ‘burning ideals.   Throughout Dabydeens novel, Joseph is depicted as the person least involved in European culture.   The narrator imbibes European culture through his contact with Western literature, as he reads Chaucer, Milton and Conrad.   Illiteracy frees Joseph from these influences and he is often depicted as a character who can take an outside, alternative view of things.   His adoption of Rastafarianism also aligns him with a more elemental Africanness and a closer association with his Jamaican origins.   Joseph stands outside European culture and is therefore a more trenchant critic of its negative forces.   It is he who comments that ‘Ivory is the heart of the white man  Ã‚  Ã‚   and he similarly exposes the sterility of the narrators attitude to literature in the dissection of poetry that is an   uncritical mimic of his teachers methods: Poetry is like bird†¦ Joseph remarks, You turning all the room in the universe and in the human mind into bird cage.  Ã‚   Yet Jo seph is unable to use his insight to gain freedom.   He is repeatedly confounded by his own ignorance, even to the extent of being unable properly to operate the video camera which is his chosen method of intercepting and interpreting his experiences.   His attempt to film ‘the wind as it brushed against the   leaves †¦ capturing on film the invisibility of the wind leaves him ‘dangling dangerously by the waist high up in a tree and is misunderstood by witnesses as an attempted suicide.  Ã‚   Such an image is used to evoke other familiar images of slaves being punished, particularly one which Dabydeen has used in his own article on ‘Eighteenth-century literature on commerce and slavery (see below).  Ã‚   This illustration was based on a 1773 eyewitness description.   The background shows skulls on posts reminiscent of a scene in Heart of Darkness and also alludes to Josephs preoccupation with bones and skeletons. It appears, therefore, that Josephs function in the novel is to represent the past in which the enslaved African was denied access to education and so was rendered inarticulate and, in terms of history, silent.   Joseph is eventually reduced to crouching in a derelict building, emaciated and silent, vainly attempting to scratch letters into the soil with a stick.   He has been unable to organise and record his experience in anything but confused and fragmentary images and in this way Dabydeen demonstrates the inarticulacy of the state of slavery and the ways in which modern historians and writers must reconstruct a past from inadequate evidence.   In telling Josephs story, the narrator of The Intended preserves Josephs history through the written word, but, just as in the history of slavery, it must always be a third person narration because, without access to reading and writing, Josephs own I is lost when he himself dies. Although it has been argued that the characters in Dabydeens novel ‘suddenly materialize, having no history, the past as empty as their pockets   this is not true, for Dabydeen is using the past figuratively and the past of his characters is often not a personal one, but is implied by their relationship to history.   The novels narrative swings between the past, present and future of the narrators experience, relating his sense of ‘shame and unreality in the present, as he feels himself to be in a state of suspension between the past from which he has come and the future to which he aspires.   For him, the past and the future are always present, creating conflicting images of who he is, what he has been and what he will become.   In this way, he demonstrates the constant crossing and re-crossing of temporal boundaries and thus lives in the liminality of which Home K Bhabha has written.    Dabydeen is not unique in his attempt to come to terms with the violence of colonial history and the aspiration towards a different future.   East is East illustrates the relationship between the past and the present through the intergenerational conflict in the Khan household.   The Khan children have no memory of a past elsewhere because they have been born in Britain; instead they are an example of the youthful offspring of the migrant generation who have an uncertain sense of where they truly belong and are alienated by their inability to find acceptance in the host community.   Having little or no sense of their past, their fragmented responses to identity are governed by their differing attempts to ‘assimilate‘.   George Kahn‘s inability to relate to his children and their aspirations symbolises the tension between the past and the present.   Though he is frustrated by his own inability to govern his family in traditional Pakistani ways and though he has failed to inculcate Muslim values into his children, George has a strong sense of his personal identity which his children seem to lack.   He is concerned at the current war in Kashmir   and he has a sense of personal involvement, feeling members of his family to be at risk.   The progress of this conflict on the television and radio acts as a background noise in the familys life, just as the past of colonial conflict is a background to their current situation.   The British Raj had united the disparate parts of the Indian subcontinent, but with independence came partition and the creation of East and West Pakistan.   The political events to which the film alludes are the rumblings of war and discontent which continued into the 1970s, with the separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh.  Ã‚   The past seems to offer no hope for the alienated generation of children who have been born in Britain.   The history of empire, whose repercussions continue to be felt, both poli tically in Asia and culturally in Salford, does not seem to offer a transformative or positive trope for the characters in Khan-Din‘s drama. Linton Kwesi Johnsons central concern is with this generation that has little or no sense of a past elsewhere or of the history which has moulded their identity.   In his work the theme of   ‘giving voice to the present and making sense of the past is always significant.   He has commented on the positive effects for the older generation of having memories with which to identify: ‘at least we could still identify with home because we came from somewhere else†¦ [Young people] born in this country †¦ dont have any other home to identify with.  Ã‚  Ã‚   In this way, he describes the migrant experience of ‘routes that have to act as a substitute for ‘roots, as McGill argues: ‘Preferring routes to roots, Johnson operates in what Homi Bhabha calls the â€Å"interstitial passage between fixed identifications.†Ã‚  Ã‚   Thus, Johnson can juxtapose his current experience of Britain with his memories of a distant homeland in very overt ways , for example in the trope of the letter home in ‘Sonnys Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem).   This poem illustrates Johnsons strategy in its title, by uniting the writers relationship with the past (as a son, he is explicitly identifying his place within the generations of history) and the present political situation (the hated sus law which enabled police to stop and search and was perceived as a racist weapon against young black men).   The poem opens with the address ‘Brixtan Prison / Jebb Avenue / Landan south-west two / Inglan which by its spelling, defamiliarises Britain.   The following greeting, Dear Mama, / Good Day, is rendered in normal English spelling, yet it uses an expression that is specific to Jamaica, since Good Day is not a way in which a British person would begin a letter.   Johnson is thus re-working both the spelling and familiar modes of British address in order to weld the past of Sonnys warm and secure childhood to the brutality and grief of the pr esent experience of Britain.   Johnsons elegiac attitude to the ‘home of Jamaica is also clear in his poems Reggae fi Dada and ‘Jamaican Lullaby‘, which both exemplify the importance of memory in the present and a connection to the past from which the migrant has come. In her poem One Continent/To Another, Grace Nichols demonstrates that it is futile to separate the theme of past and present from the sense of place.   The passage of slaves and later migrants moving from one continent to another is a transition in space as well as time.   In her book I is a Long Memoried Woman, Nichols seeks to relate the past to the present by her focus on the subject of slavery and in poems such as One Continent/To Another she describes the experience of the slave as a movement in time and space: from the past of bleeding memories in the darkness to the future of ‘piecing the life she would lead‘.   Nichols uses the confusion between beginnings and endings to suggest the notion that past, present and future are simultaneous: Being born a womanshe moved againknew it was the Black Beginningthough everything said it wasthe end. This is an example of what Easton describes as ‘the imaginative, in particular metaphoric processes by which Nichols transforms the historical African-Caribbean female experience into positive images.  Ã‚  Ã‚   Easton also comments that ‘Forgetting †¦ is to be silenced.  Ã‚   Just as Joseph in The Intended is silenced by his inability to record his experiences, so in the work of Nichols, the inability to call up memories is another form of silencing of the past and, through it, the present.   In the poem One Continent/To Another Nichols uses the repeating of a negative phrase to convey a positive sense of the past when she describes the woman who hasnt forgotten / hasnt forgotten.   As the title of this poetry collection suggests, the theme of memory is central to Nicholss intention and her construction of memory as a double negative in this poem not merely remembering, but, more importantly, not forgetting illustrates the experience of memories that on the surface are emphatically negative but that can actually be transformed into the positive and life-giving experience of the present.   In this way, Nichols transforms the memory of the experience of slavery into a discussion of the present experience of migration.   One Continent/To another records the first experience of enforced migration: that of the slaves in the middle passage womb of crossing the Atlantic who encounter a metaphorical giving birth to a new New World self.   Each migrant experiences the sense of figuratively stumbl[ing] onto the shore, being dragged down, thirsting, the disorientation of displacement, yet Nichols turns this negative, bereft of fecundity into her final affirmation of the future: the life she would lead.   Nichols thus succeeds in changing an essentially brutal experience into one of affirmation and strength.   The transformational potency of migration is thus embedded not in the experience itself, but in the memory of survival and in th e imaginative power of the migrant.   In this way Nicholss work can be interpreted as an example of the power of the imagination over the ‘scraps of disparate experience to which Salman Rushdie refers (as discussed by John McLeod, above). For David Dabydeen, too, the time shifts in the narration of The Intended are also geographical shifts.   Large portions of the book are concerned with the narrators childhood in Guyana and these memories of a distant homeland which are juxtaposed upon his experience of Britain.   During the time of the period of the British Empire there was always a sense that England and especially London was the dominant metropolitan centre, while the colonial homeland was regarded as dominated periphery and was denigrated as inferior.   Unable to define themselves, except in contradistinction to the imperial centre, the inhabitants of the colonies looked upon their own homelands with a sense of unreality because they were undefined in terms of the dominant colonial discourses.   In seeking to create his own homeland as a setting for his novel, Dabydeen creates multiple literary landscapes, not only enshrining London and Oxford as markers of education and achievement, but also giving sta tus to the homeland in which his imagination was formed. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin have discussed the crisis of migration in terms of the ambivalent relationship between identity and place that often distinguished the colonial experience:A major feature of postcolonial literatures is the concern with place and displacement.   It is here that the special postcolonial crisis of identity comes into being; the concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place. For the postcolonial writer, to re-cast their own homeland as a reference point against which to see Britain is a reversal of the pattern of the past in which all other countries were contrasted with the ‘normative core of British literature, landscape and history.  Ã‚   What is perhaps most crucial to Dabydeens use of Guyana as a setting is its interweaving with the narrators experience of London in a way that always tends to dominate and qualify London.   For example, in his first reference to Guyana, the narrator begins with a metaphor: I walked down Bedford Hill feeling sorry for myself, wishing I had a family to go home to.   Nasims mother was like my grandmother who waited by the roadside and when I stepped of the bus at Albion Village would take my hand tightly in hers and lead me

Marketing mix for Levis Brand Makeover

Marketing mix for Levis Brand Makeover The target market for the Levis image makeover is the young generation. However, Levis is now promoting Curve ID, but it is not enough to beat up premium jeans because curve id is a just guide line for customer when they are to buy Levis Jeans being confused what will fit them right. Levis need to offer an optimized assortment of their Jeans products to their customers. Offering of the best mix of the products is essential to the long-term success and for customer satisfaction. The Product assortment optimization needs the strategic inventory decisions and the product selection. The best product assortment strategies should maximize the profits, minimize risk and increase the overall sales. They should include a kind of the mixture for the Jeans products basing on their respective life cycles in your store. If it offers a strong mix of the products basing on the product life, customers will be satisfied and develop the desire to make repeat purchases of the established product and there are higher chances for them to piquà © their interests with the new options. Introduction of new products will increase the amount of time that the customers tend to increase the frequency of routine checks into their stores. Price Levis jeans are quite affordable, to have a better approach to its new line, they will have to increase their price to a margin that will be competing with the premium jeans. But not as high as price of premium jeans. It has to be reasonable. The customer recognition of Levis jeans price is not high therefore, It is not a good idea to challenge its price recognition, otherwise it rather lose customers who belong to the Y-generation with that is known to be very volatile. As a result its new line would have a narrow range of $100 to $200. Later on, Levis Jeans will involve the techniques such as the temporary discounts, coupons, the cash refunds, rebates or the buy-one-get-one offers which are the common pricing strategies that are used to drive the sales. C. Place Levis jeans should first create the demand for its products. Then get those products into the consumers hands. Planning of its product distribution strategy needs to be done during the product development stage. The placement of the products is very important because the methods employed in the distribution of the products impacts on the actual retail price of the products. Levis has worldwide stores as well as online stores. They have been reaching customers greatly. I dont think they need a critical strategy for place, but they should not concentrate on its wholesale store and should not have its products showing up on discount stores like Wal-Mart or target. This company should use the exclusive distribution strategy to establish the image of its jeans over the premium jeans brand. By use of a limited number of the distribution channels, the partners will be enabled to create an image of exclusivity. Levis jeans should also consider the parallel distribution opportunities and Set up the market research opportunities in order to find out the customer preferences for the mode of receiving the products. D. Promotions Levis will use both direct and indirect advertisements. The celebrity marketing can also be used as a form of indirect marketing, since the y-generation is a fashion sensitive group, they can be easily influenced by the celebrities preferences. Trendy celebrity association with the brands of Levis Jeans wears, young people will get the pretty fashionable jeans unconsciously. And Levis street post ads as direct marketing would better have just picture image with its logo. No slogan no title. No more go back to original slogan. It is not working for the young. They just like something simple. Just one image picture that bring unique and trendy image of Levis well is just enough. The Levis jeans should determine goals of your promotion to establish the best promotional activities. Your promotional strategies could target a specific demographic or reach millions of people. Therefore Levis Jeans will use Advertising as the means of product promotion. Direct mails, the televisions, and the magazines. Other options may include; the in-store displays, use of billboards, newspapers, the online display advertisements, and the electronic email advertisements. The Levis Jeans will develop advertisements that define clear benefits to consumer if they purchase its products, and at the same time reinforce its brand image and reputation through the Internet. E. People. Brand communication helps to bridge the gap in the perception that the target audiences have on the brand. Effective product communication of the Levis Jeans will give competitive advantages which will targets the receptive Y-generation customers with the marketing message. Product communication strategy is then a very important component of the marketing plan. The best product communication strategies will help to improve the chances of delivering the message to the targeted customers therefore increasing the sales. Levis Jeans will use multiple methods of communicating with its customers, through the e-mail newsletters, the magazine advertisements, postcards, the billboards, in-store displays, and good product packaging F. New Tactics Through Internet Marketing  Strategy; the company will explore the strategies and new tactics that can be used on the Internet to enhance and support the Levis Jeans and the business overall marketing objectives. It will conduct banner promotions; generate the targeted online traffic, positioning its contents, and the overall brand awareness.

An Analysis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Essays -- GDP Economy Econ

An Analysis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) The current state of the economy in the United States has been slow in recent months. While the economy is not currently in a recession, we may eventually fall victim to the first recession we’ve had in nearly ten years. The economy in general is showing growth, just not much. It will be difficult to predict what exactly will happen to the US economy in the future. Many economists do not agree on what will become of the economy. Some feel that we will begin a recession over the next year, and some feel that there is significant policy implementation that will allow us to dodge a recession and regain our economic strength. There are many factors that make up the US economy. The means in which I will discuss the overall growth and current status of the economy is by analyzing the Gross Domestic Product, and discuss the factors that cause it to rise and fall. The GDP is the total aggregate income of the United States. It is comprised of consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports. The GDP in the fourth quarter of 2000 grew at a 1.1% annual rate, the lowest since a 0.8% increase in the second quarter of 1995. The below par performance in GDP is due to those factors that comprise the GDP. The most important of which is consumption. Consumption in the United States has been less than expected mainly due to low consumer confidence. Consumer confidence has hit a 10 year low with an index of 106.8 as reported by Alan Greenspan. In the past 2 months the index number has plummeted nearly 22 points, the biggest decrease since the 1990-1991 recession. The reason for this recent drop in consumer confidence is due to several key factors. One factor is the poor performance of the stock market. The Dow Jones is down from its peak that was hit last year, but has now rebounded slightly. The Nasdaq took a dive with the decrease in t he prices of tech stocks. The Nasdaq has fallen nearly 56% from its peak in March of 2000. The Wilshire 5000, which is a broader market, is also down by about 22%. Also a factor in dropping consumer confidence is the fear of more layoffs by major employers. The media has paid a lot of attention to large layoffs of companies, yet the labor markets still remain fairly tight. The natural rate of unemployment in the US is approximately 5%, which is higher than the actual rate... ...ints on congress never materialized. If the rate of domestic spending had risen at the same rate as inflation, at the end of his presidency, the government would have had a surplus of almost 250 billion dollars. The way that supply-side economics works is by increasing the disposable income of the taxpayer, which will inevitably increase consumption. The theory is that if people get to retain more of the money that they earn they will work better and longer thus increasing productivity as well as the quality of goods. President Bush’s tax cut plan if done correctly will help greatly to get the US economy to increase its growth. So is the United States in a recession? The answer is no it isn’t. The US has had a period of sluggish growth, but still it has been positive. The economy will have to grow at a negative rate over the next two quarters in order for the US to be in a recession. But is there cause for concern that a recession may occur? Yes there is, but the government’s interventions should keep the US from falling victim to recession. I believe that the economy will eventually pick itself back up and avoid a recession. The GDP will once again grow at a quick pace.

America Needs Cloning Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Science Essays

For many years, animals have been used to facilitate the testing of new procedures, drugs, and quest for information. Now as we enter the 21st century, humanity has created computer prediction models, tissue cloning, and great understanding of chemical reactions. However most of these new methods still are only sparingly used, despite their accuracy, and animal testing still remains the test method of choice. There's a newly developed technology that can allow doctors and scientists to duplicate living organisms. This development in technology is known as cloning, and it has forever changed the views of life. Cloning can serve as the answer to problems which plaque the human, animal, and plant populations. Any living species can now be artificially created through cloning. This could potentially eliminate the possibility of extinction among many species. Cloning creates the possibility of having a twin or child carrying the exact DNA of another person. The reproduction of animals wou ld ensure the lasting life of all species, and produce an abundant amount of food to feed the people of the world. Even the vegetarians of the world would be happy with the amount of vegetation that could be produced. Cloning is the perfect means of improving the quality of human life on this planet. Cloning is a very controversial topic and will be for many years to come. In February 1997, scientists in Scotland announced the birth of Dolly, the first cloned sheep. This heralded the future of further cloning possibilities and scientists began extensive experiments on cloning, and have since cloned both plants and animals successfully. The next step was to clone actual human beings but before experiments could be carried out, pressure started to build on the scientists because people started to doubt if cloning was ethical and morally correct. The government began to ban and impose constraints on cloning as a result of public pressure. After the cloning of Dolly, President Clinton was quick to cut all federal funding for research of human cloning (Lester & Hefley, 123). In December of 2001, the United Kingdom put a ban on human reproductive cloning but not therapeutic cloning (Seppa, 32). Even though cloning raises some difficult ethical issues, there are many aspects of cloning that will be very beneficial to mankind.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If the experimentation of cloning continues in t... ... in a number of various ways to benefit the lives of Americans. This new scientific techniques can be used to improve the quality of life and bring balance to the ecosystem. It could very well be inevitable that cloning play an important, if not vital, role in American lives. Society may be forced to accept these possibilities and lift some of the constraints off the experimentation of cloning. More research needs to be carried out to help eliminate any possible risks associated with the newly discovered procedure. Cloning doesn?t necessarily have to have a negative impact on the world. Cloning is a very beneficial technique to improve the quality of life, why not use the scientific breakthrough to the best of the world?s abilities. Cloning is the future. Works Cited Andrews, Dr. L. (1999). The Clone Age. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Lester, L., Hefley, J. (1998). Human Cloning. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company. Pence, G. (1998). Who?s Afraid of Human Cloning? Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Seppa, N. (2002, January). Forbidden Tests. Science News, 53. Travis, Dr. J. (2001, October). Dolly Was Lucky. Science News, 250-251. America Needs Cloning Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Science Essays For many years, animals have been used to facilitate the testing of new procedures, drugs, and quest for information. Now as we enter the 21st century, humanity has created computer prediction models, tissue cloning, and great understanding of chemical reactions. However most of these new methods still are only sparingly used, despite their accuracy, and animal testing still remains the test method of choice. There's a newly developed technology that can allow doctors and scientists to duplicate living organisms. This development in technology is known as cloning, and it has forever changed the views of life. Cloning can serve as the answer to problems which plaque the human, animal, and plant populations. Any living species can now be artificially created through cloning. This could potentially eliminate the possibility of extinction among many species. Cloning creates the possibility of having a twin or child carrying the exact DNA of another person. The reproduction of animals wou ld ensure the lasting life of all species, and produce an abundant amount of food to feed the people of the world. Even the vegetarians of the world would be happy with the amount of vegetation that could be produced. Cloning is the perfect means of improving the quality of human life on this planet. Cloning is a very controversial topic and will be for many years to come. In February 1997, scientists in Scotland announced the birth of Dolly, the first cloned sheep. This heralded the future of further cloning possibilities and scientists began extensive experiments on cloning, and have since cloned both plants and animals successfully. The next step was to clone actual human beings but before experiments could be carried out, pressure started to build on the scientists because people started to doubt if cloning was ethical and morally correct. The government began to ban and impose constraints on cloning as a result of public pressure. After the cloning of Dolly, President Clinton was quick to cut all federal funding for research of human cloning (Lester & Hefley, 123). In December of 2001, the United Kingdom put a ban on human reproductive cloning but not therapeutic cloning (Seppa, 32). Even though cloning raises some difficult ethical issues, there are many aspects of cloning that will be very beneficial to mankind.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If the experimentation of cloning continues in t... ... in a number of various ways to benefit the lives of Americans. This new scientific techniques can be used to improve the quality of life and bring balance to the ecosystem. It could very well be inevitable that cloning play an important, if not vital, role in American lives. Society may be forced to accept these possibilities and lift some of the constraints off the experimentation of cloning. More research needs to be carried out to help eliminate any possible risks associated with the newly discovered procedure. Cloning doesn?t necessarily have to have a negative impact on the world. Cloning is a very beneficial technique to improve the quality of life, why not use the scientific breakthrough to the best of the world?s abilities. Cloning is the future. Works Cited Andrews, Dr. L. (1999). The Clone Age. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Lester, L., Hefley, J. (1998). Human Cloning. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company. Pence, G. (1998). Who?s Afraid of Human Cloning? Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Seppa, N. (2002, January). Forbidden Tests. Science News, 53. Travis, Dr. J. (2001, October). Dolly Was Lucky. Science News, 250-251.

Banning Books Essay

Teenagers are reading more books than ever now, and some people say that we have Harry Potter to thank. But surrounding teen books is the ‘myth’ of book banning. Some may think that only old books were banned, and that they are now back on the shelves of schools and libraries around the country. This is not so. Not only have old classics such as The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger been banned, but newer books are being challenged as well. The controversy of book banning stems from the pursuit of knowledge. Though Hitler did many bad things in his lifetime schools still teach about the Holocaust, and yet now parents are requesting that their children do not learn what certain books have to offer in the way of knowledge. But some parents do not stop there. Books are being taken off school shelves, depriving all students instead of just one. Can one person influence a whole school or town? Is this even fair to everyone involved? The answer is no. Book banning should be illegal because reading a book is an individual choice, some books are banned without much thought, and sometimes books are banned without all parties involved reading it. People recommend books to each other all the time, but reading books is another matter. Sure, a friend may say that a book is good but that doesn’t mean that you will read it. But by banning books schools and libraries are taking away the choice to read the book whether it was recommended or not. While some people think that foul language in books is a perfectly logical reason to take them off the shelves not everyone shares this idea. But if libraries and schools only hear one group’s side of the story they are more likely to ban the book. The process of banning a book seems at first to be simple. A parent (probably the most common case) goes to their child’s school and gets a form with several boxes to check off: â€Å"Do not assign this book to my child. Withdraw it from all students as well as my child. Send it back to the proper department for reevaluation. † And then: What do you object to in this book? What material do you recommend to replace this book? Sounds rather easy, right? And then there’s the vote. In some cases those voting on the outcome haven’t read the book. If the book is banned what example are schools setting for the students? They are basically saying that it is alright to take knowledge, no matter what it is, away from someone or several people. Would it be right to not teach anyone about Hitler? Would everyone support lessons about wars and discrimination being removed? Most likely not. But when books are banned that is what schools are doing, they are taking away something that was never theirs in the first place. They are labeling something inappropriate based on their beliefs or the beliefs of one person. And this is undermining the individual’s choice to read the book. And sometimes they seem to not realize what they are even doing. If you look up why some books have been banned in the past it’s likely that you will find some pretty crazy reasons. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger was banned by one group of parents because they thought it would turn their kids into communists. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding was challenged because it demoted humankind to the level of animals. 1984 by George Orwell was banned because it was pro-communist. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien was banned for being ‘satanic. ‘ More recently the book The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson is being challenged in an Oklahoma school for being inappropriate for teenagers. According to the mother of a student at the school the book has â€Å"Homosexual content, unprotected sex, underage drinking, and reckless promiscuity† and that is why the book should be banned. Though these can all be viewed as appropriate reasons to ban a book those who took this claim seriously seem not to have connected all the clues. The book in question does have homosexual content, as does the real world that teens live in everyday, but there is not sex in the book, unprotected or not. The mother also states that the book â€Å"has no moral fiber† which is not true. The Bermudez Triangle is the story of three girls and their friendship when two get into a relationship together. No moral fiber? But instead of taking these things into account, the book was removed from the shelves. This case could turn into countless others all over the United States and it needs to be stopped. Taking away a book without even assessing the reasons to see if they make sense when applied to the book is lazy and unfair to the author and those who want to read the book. Taking a book off the shelves because several or all parties involved want to is a bad thing, but what if only one person objected to the book? How is that fair to the rest of the people it affects? If one person said they didn’t want to go to a movie but five others wanted to what would happen? If one person didn’t want someone to be president in the United States but the majority did what would happen? The outcomes of these two situations are relatively the same in general because the United States is based on Democracy. But what if the situation was this: What if one person thought a book was inappropriate for children and the rest had never read the book but still had to decide? What would happen? In some cases those voting on the book’s banning (usually the principle of the school, the Director of Human Resources and the Director of Instruction) have not even read the book. And what position does this put the book in? A bad one, that’s for sure. If only one person has read the book and are complaining about it then what are the others to think? That the book should be banned of course! This is by no means fair to students, the author, or any other patrons of the library. It is blindly stealing knowledge from others and not acknowledging it. It is, in essence, like teaching that Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad person because he held marches but not telling why he was holding marches because you don’t even know. It is informing someone (or misinforming someone) because you have no idea what you are talking about, which is better known as lying. The Bill of Rights says â€Å"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;† Banning books is certainly not keeping with this statement. Freedom of the press includes books, and taking books off the shelves is therefore prohibiting the reading of them. This makes book banning against the Bill of Rights and unconstitutional. If the United States keeps book banning legal the country is going against its very own fiber – that people have certain rights, that the press has rights, and that this freedom is important. A parent keeping their own child from reading something is their decision, but to deprive their child of reading for their education is not in any way wise or good, and keeping other students and children from reading books is just as bad. Book banning should be illegal because reading is an individual’s decision, banning books is often done without much thought or reason, and sometimes book banning is done unfairly because those voting on the book’s banning have not read the book in question. Teaching children to steal is thought of as wrong, and a country built on freedom should not permit any stealing, much less the stealing on knowledge.

Can Personality Be Changed Essay

The paper is very well conducted in my opinion because hey have looked at the in-between part of personality by examining acquired and changeable beliefs. They have seen that they underlie many patterns of adaptive functioning, and that they have unique implications for understanding personality development and personality change. There are a few different things that we have learned so far that support Dwecks argument. In chapter 3 page 42, it talks about Moral Development and how it changes the ability to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. When someone has to make decisions they go by what’s best for them and the way they chose what’s best or them is by what their personality can handle. In chapter 3 page 43 it says that in adolescence they go through physiological changes where the conflict with parents increase, they have mood swings, depressions becomes a factor, they encounter rule breaking behavior, and their peers become important. So during that age period is when the peers have a big influence on a teenager’s personality. Although there are many thing that I have learned that supports Dwecks argument there are also things that contradict her argument. On page 42 chapter 3 it states that people ages 12 and bove are capable of abstract thinking, comparing and classifying ideas, and thinking about future possibilities. So in those ages they tend to have a mind of their own and are less influenced by the people they are around. On august 7, 2010 they did a study on how personality is genetically enhanced. So with personality being passed down genetically it’s always in your genes and that it will be a part of you forever. If personality can be changed then how can it be in your genes? Personality is a personal trait that developed by your personal behaviors and utlooks on things. I personally like this article because I can relate to it. Being a teenager myself I notice how peers can have the biggest impact on how I may feel sometimes or may want to respond to certain situations. I also know that some people change around the different groups they hang around with. I know that the way people may act or boss, or parents. I personally don’t agree with the article that personality can be changed I think your personality can’t change I feel that you Just grow to be more mature and can determine what’s right and what wrong.